


GENE EXPRESSION IN AMBER

by kalima



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abduction, Angst and Humor, Babies, Case Fic, Gen, Missing Persons, Pregnancy, Super smart people being smart, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalima/pseuds/kalima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pregnant woman wants Sherlock Holmes to find her missing employers and then goes missing herself.  Sherlock may be able to solve the puzzle, but he might never be able to make it right. Set in S1, canon compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in 2012. Had to take it down for a while. Now putting it back up for posterity:-) If you’re pregnant you may find the subject matter distressing. Just saying. But no babies were harmed in the making of this fic.

After some fifteen and a half hours of sleep Sherlock Holmes awakened, wandered out of his dank cave, and opened the refrigerator. He stood there blinking. 

“Yeah, there’s nothing new in there.” John said. 

“May I eat this pasta?”

“You’re asking now?”

“My mother’s in my head for some reason. She’s making me.” John glanced up, mostly because of the novelty of the admission. But it was clear that however much Sherlock’s mother might influence his asking, she couldn’t make him wait for an answer. He was already eating the pasta, cold, out of the container, fork to mouth over the sink like a starving man. Very likely he was starving, considering how little he’d eaten for the past fortnight. Still, it was mind-boggling the way the man _could_ eat once a case was solved. Reminded John of that boa constrictor an old girlfriend of Harry’s had kept in her bath. Likely this pasta would keep him going for another month.

John had been around long enough now (six months) to note this behavior as an actual pattern. He wondered how to write about it, or if he should. “After solving a case, Sherlock Holmes eats like a teenaged boy with a hollow leg, sleeps 12 -15 hours at a stretch, takes long, _very_ long showers—“ 

He probably shouldn’t mention about the showers on the blog. Probably. 

Sherlock rinsed the plastic bowl and left it in the sink. He looked about then grabbed an apple almost as an afterthought – his mother, perhaps, in his head again and on him about nutrition. The apple he ate in four great bites, seeds, core and all. Only the stem remained, like a sad little punctuation mark on the countertop that John would later deposit in the bin. Sustenance properly dealt with, Sherlock threw himself onto the sofa with his fully charged Blackberry and started doing whatever it was he did with it when he wasn’t solving crimes. 

During the downtime, John had been keeping himself occupied here at home. This was made easier by his current lack of income. He read the papers (before things were cut out of them). He watched sports on telly (including figure skating, which arguably was _not_ a sport but the skaters were all really fit, so…). He meandered through social media sites (clicking every link to cat macros and reposting anything that called upon him to repost as proof of his belief and/or commitment to the post’s particular cause, affiliation, or political stance). He looked at endless videos of people getting footballs to the groin and deftly avoided (most) porn sites. 

God, he was bored. 

His sister’s ex had wished him a belated birthday. Boyd Jessup still wanted to get together for a pint. There was something about meeting up with an old mate from uni who’d poked you on Facebook -- John felt very strongly that grown men ought not to poke each other on Facebook. It was just…awkward. 

A job offer! Oh, in Sunderland. And – 

Well. Okay. Yeah. This should be entertaining. 

“Sherlock? Did someone named Amber Call get in touch with you by any chance?” 

“Angry Birds.”

“Amber Call. _C-a-l-l._ ” 

“I’m. Playing. Angry. Birds.”

“Oh right, sorry. Forgot. You’re fourteen now.”

“If I were a fourteen year old boy I’d be playing BattleMonsters.”

“Fourteen year old girl then.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s just this Amber is under the impression she spoke with you. Something about her employers disappearing.”

“Oh. _Her._ Yes. No. She sounds fat.”

“You _did_ talk to her then?” It was entirely possible that Sherlock could tell the woman was fat from hearing her voice. 

“She texted. Me. Die, pigs, _die_.” 

“So…she sounds fat in a text message.” 

“She’s American, from Alabama. Which, I believe has the third fattest population in the entire United States. Statistical likelihood she’s huge.”

“Well, apparently, you told her to come by around three-ish.”

“I— when did I? Three-ish? _Ish?_ That doesn’t sound like me at all.” Sherlock sat upright suddenly, eyes wide. “It’s five minutes after now.” 

“Yes. She’s hijacked the comment thread on my blog to say she couldn’t get a hold of you to confirm, but assumes it’s still on. You might want to put on your dressing gown. Or clothes. Of some sort.” 

“John. I did not tell that woman to come here--“

The buzzer sounded. “Too late.”

***

Sherlock had been correct about Amber Call being huge. She was hugely pregnant. John suspected twins – _at least._ He showed her to a chair and then helped lower her into it. She thanked him warmly. She even called him “sir.” Definitely an accent from the southern US, although from Alabama or someplace else, he wouldn’t know the difference. 

She was young, twenty-five at most, with pale grey-blue eyes and dark wavy hair spilling over the shoulders of her coat from beneath a Peruvian hat – one of those with the strings hanging down and the poms on top. Only the top button of her coat was buttoned, mostly because it wouldn’t close around the rest of her. Except for the cherry red of her coat and the beige of her hat, she was dressed in black. A black tunic was stretched to capacity over her belly, the navel distended and clearly visible. Black leggings couldn’t hide the swollen ankles either, and her feet puffed a bit around black ballet flats (with entirely inadequate arch support he noted). Probably the only shoes she could put on without bending over. 

“Is he here?” she asked, placing her gigantic backpack on the floor near her feet. She took a sip from her travel mug. “I’m not too late, am I?”

“No, he’s uh – he’ll be here shortly. Can I get you something, water, or crackers or ….milk?“ There wasn’t much else they had in that he could offer a pregnant woman. He wasn’t sure if the milk was still good. 

“Oh, aren’t you sweet, thanks, but I’ve got my herbal tea.” She didn’t say the “h” in herbal. What with the Dixie-drawl and the dimples and the uncomfortable glow of impending motherhood she was, quite frankly, adorable. 

“When are you due, if you don’t mind me asking?”

The dimples in her smile stayed fixed, but the tone of the voice cooled considerably. “Soon.”

Sherlock wandered back into the sitting room, fully dressed, though barefoot. Phone in hand, he navigated the space without ever looking up. He was like a smartphone ninja. 

“I’ve just checked the messages from Amber Call over the past two days and, surprise, not a single response—“ He paused, a mere fraction of a second. John was probably the only person (besides Sherlock’s own brother) that would have noticed it - the tiny stumble, the micro-twitch of alarm, the slight pause between one breath and another as Sherlock reassessed and readjusted whatever assumption he’d made re: Amber Call. Then, “-- from me.” 

Equanimity restored, his gaze swept over her with practiced precision before settling on her face and then staying there uncomfortably long. “Of course, I slept through most of these.” 

Her eyes darted predictably away from his scrutiny, and she laid a hand on her belly before looking back up at him. “Yes sir, I did stretch the truth a teeny tiny bit—“

“Uh, _no._ You _lied._ ”

She took a deep breath and sighed miserably. “Yes, um, yeah I did. I’m real sorry about that, Mr. Holmes, I really am, but I’m in a desperate bind here and you wouldn’t answer my calls. I thought maybe if I – well, if y’all saw me in person—“ She looked at John, appealing to his kinder nature. 

“You’re pregnant,” Sherlock said, “not ‘differently-abled.’” He used air quotes. Air quotes were never a good sign. “Your condition obliges me to surrender my seat on public transport, but it hardly makes your other problems more interesting. I certainly don’t chase after –“ His finger drew a lazy circle in the air indicating the area occupied by her belly-- “ _baby-daddies_. You’ve got no money or you would have gone to a solicitor, hired a private investigator at the very least.”

“But I thought—I mean, I was told you didn’t always charge.”

“At my discretion! Who told you that, anyway?”

“Um, Sherlock,” John interjected quietly. “It may have been mentioned on my blog.”

“Take it down.”

“I’ve been to the police,” she offered breathlessly, trying to reach into the backpack at her feet. “One of them gave me your number. I’ve—I’ve got it here—“

She huffed and wheezed and grunted and flailed in an attempt to bend over just the little bit she needed to reach what she was looking for. Sherlock seemed transfixed by the Herculean effort it was taking her to perform such a rudimentary task. Unable to bear it any longer, John stepped in. The pack felt heavy and unbalanced as he deposited it onto the narrow ledge of her knees. She handed him the mug to hold, which he did, pointedly ignoring the look Sherlock aimed his direction. The smell wafting up from the mug was certainly … herbal. Woody and bitter and slightly astringent. Something about it--

She gave a little squeal of triumph, dropped the pack back onto the floor, and held the card aloft. “He wrote your cell number on the back. See?”

“Lestrade. Arse.” Sherlock blew out a noisy sigh. “Here’s the thing, Amber. I’ve just eaten a pound of pasta. I’m sluggish and likely to be of little help to anyone for oh, at least a week. Even so I might have been persuaded to listen to your sad tale if not for the manner in which you clumsily wheedled and manipulated your way into our home.”

 _Our_ home now. John thought. That was new. And suspicious.

“So, I’ve seen you, right? We can agree on that? And having done so, you can now waddle back down the stairs and out the door.” He turned from her, already engrossed in his Blackberry, one hand in the air _bye bye, dismissed – _“Back to Tuscaloosa or Talladega or wherever the hell it is you’re from. Oh, and don’t forget the luggage you’ve stashed in the stairwell. Wouldn’t want our landlady tripping over it. Thanks.”__

__With that he went into his bedroom and shut the door._ _

__Amber sat in stunned silence for a moment before she sucked in a ragged breath. Her head dropped into her hands and a low moan escaped her. Then, to John’s horror, she began to sob – deep, gasping sobs of hopeless, helpless despair._ _

__“Oh shit,” he whispered. “Damn, I am so sorry. He’s an ass. Maybe I can—what do you need—can I get you—“_ _

__She waved him off, trying to gain control of herself, dragging the palms of her hands over her face while little gasping breaths puffed out of her in desperate prayers to Jesus. It was the kind of weeping and praying that could break your heart. If you had one._ _

__The bedroom door opened. “That doesn’t work on me.” The door closed again._ _

__“Is your name Jesus?” Amber shouted at the door. John took a startled step back. “I don’t need spiritual guidance from you,’ she continued. ‘Hell, I don’t even need your sympathy. I need your goddamned expertise!”_ _

__She broke off, trying to sniffle in the snot running down. Her bag seemed a universe away there at her feet and the frustration of that brought her right back to outrage. “God! The last thing I wanna be doing right now is bawling my eyes out in your living room, but I can’t help it. I’ve had a very bad year. And, oh that’s right, I’m also _pregnant!_ ” _ _

__John had fetched a box of tissues and at the sight of it she started crying again, as if this were the greatest kindness anyone had ever shown her. She plucked one out of the box, then another. “Sorry, sorry. I don’t normally-- I’m just so frustrated. I don’t think I’ve cried this much in my entire life.”_ _

__“It goes with the territory I understand.”_ _

__She blew her nose. “Crying over every little thing is bad enough, but it’s the stupidity I can’t handle. Two years ago I was playing with DNA microarrays, and today I swear I couldn’t hold a thought together with a glue gun and a roll of electrical tape. Pregnancy has shrunk my brain. My brain is like eight percent smaller. _I have a smaller brain._ ”_ _

__“That must certainly be…distressing,” John said. “Um…it’ll return to normal size in a few months. And I’m a doctor so I know what I’m talking about.”_ _

__Sherlock’s door opened again, more slowly this time, and he stepped out with a look very close to chagrin. “You might have led with DNA microarrays, you know.” He stabbed at his chest with his fingers – “Chemist.”_ _

__She clutched the crumpled tissues in her fist and then glanced at him, sizing him up now instead of the other way around. “You’d never be able to cope with these chemical changes, I’m real sure of that. In fact, you should thank your lucky stars that this can never _ever_ happen to you, Mr. Holmes, because you’d probably just eat the gun.” _ _

__John had to admit she had Sherlock pegged. But he only laughed. “Maybe. But it didn’t exactly _happen_ to you, either, did it? It’s not as if you were assaulted by a test tube and forced to bear its children.” He gazed at her with a mixture of pseudo-awe and mock-horror. “How many have you got in there anyway?”_ _

__“Two!”_ _

__“I’m sorry, what?” John said._ _

__“She’s having twins. Really John, do keep up.”_ _

__“I did make note of the possible twins. _Doctor_.” He copied Sherlock’s gesture from earlier, hand like a blade aimed at his chest. “I’m just not following th –“ and then it dawned. “Oh.”_ _

__“Right. Amber here is a commercial surrogate. And these employers that have disappeared would be the couple that hired her to gestate their offspring.”_ _


	2. Chapter 2

“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying it like that,” Amber sighed, after Sherlock had restated her situation several times, both euphemistically and scientifically, and with a disgraceful amount of glee. 

She’d taken off her coat and hat. Her hair was partly flattened to her head and partly crackling with static electricity. She was flushed and looked even more physically uncomfortable than before. “It’s not like I’m popping ‘em out once a year and selling ‘em to the highest bidder. I have never done this before and I am never doing it again. Besides, they contacted me, all right?”

“Really? You specifically?” 

“Yes. Their lawyer – um, the Harman-Lebowitz’s lawyer -- Megan Forsmark, she e-mailed me about it.”

“What? So, out of the blue a lawyer contacts you and asks if you’d consider bearing the children of strangers?” He spoke without looking at her while his thumbs worked some kind of hocus pocus on his Blackberry. “You must’ve applied to an agency, or at least expressed an interest.”

“It was posted on a kiosk in the quad at school. There’s stuff like that posted all the time, you know, ways to earns extra cash volunteering for research studies or whatever -- fertility clinics and sperm banks are always looking for donors at the big universities. Donating ova can pay for grad school.”

“Is that what you needed the money for?” 

“Her motivation isn’t relevant, John.”

“Why isn’t it? She’s having babies for money. Seems relevant to me.”

“You’re confusing moral objection with relevancy.” Sherlock said. He flicked a glance at John. “Leave it alone.”

“I don’t have a moral objection to it.”

“And yet, you’re clearly angry. Not ten minutes ago you were falling all over yourself to help her. You thought she was as cute as the proverbial button.”

“I never said anything like that.”

“You were thinking it. You had the face.”

“The _face?_ ”

“A particular expression you get whenever you’ve gone all…tenderhearted. Your natural affinity for taking care of people and protecting them, it’s in your face. It’s a thing.”

John opened his mouth to assert…something. He didn’t get a chance. 

“My mother’s cancer came back.” Amber blurted out suddenly. “That’s why I did it.”

What showed on John’s face then was a hot flush of shame. Sherlock shot him a look, _tried to warn you_. “Christ.” John whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh! I didn’t mean— I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad or anything. Mr. Holmes is right. You’re a good person.” 

“Mmm, not exactly what I said—“

“It’s what you meant.” Sherlock started to protest but she spoke over him, aiming her words at John instead. Appealing to the ‘good person' was good strategy. “I just didn’t want you thinking I was callous or greedy. My mother’s cancer had been in remission since I was seventeen, but then when it came back she didn’t have any health insurance. Nobody will insure you once you’ve had cancer. So, about a week after she started treatments at the hospital, we got this notice in the mail that the management corporation for the hospital had put a lien on our house.”

John looked at her in shock. Even Sherlock seemed stunned. “I wasn’t aware that they could do that. What’s the name of the management company?” 

“Special Care.”

“The name alone is bloody criminal,” John muttered.

Sherlock ran a search on his Blackberry. “Ooh. A Fortune 500 company. Fancy.”

“Is it significant?”

“Don’t know.” John could see him set the information aside. Somewhere in Sherlock’s brain was a wobbly table stacked high with bits of information he’d set aside for sorting at a later date. “You still haven’t explained how the prospective parents found you.”

“That’s the weird part. I didn’t even finish filling out the application. I went to the website and started one but as soon as it got to the section about family health history I stopped. What was the point?”

“I’m not sure why it would matter to the parents whether or not there was a history of cancer if they were simply using someone else’s uterus to gestate their own fetus,” Sherlock said. Amber swallowed and looked down at her fingers splayed across her belly. He blinked, once, twice, glanced at John. “Women with cancer have given birth to healthy babies.”

“We’re talking about an awful lot of money. You’d want to minimize the risk to your investment, I imagine,” John said.

“True enough. To what agency did you _almost_ apply?” 

“The Surrogacy Source Group.” 

“Was Megan Forsmark associated with this group?”

“Um, um…well,” she began, her eyes a little unfocused. “Uh, I’m not sure. I just assumed. Megan contacted me about three weeks after I visited the website. She said she had a couple from England who were very interested in me being the surrogate for their child and would I consider interviewing. I wondered why they didn’t find someone here.”

“Paid surrogacy is illegal here. It still happens, but –”

“We English find it all rather distasteful.” Sherlock flashed John a quick grin and was met with a glower. “Not the Irish. There’s an entire blog devoted to Irish couples who got their children through surrogates in the US. See?” He held up the Blackberry and wiggled it a bit. Because that was how people sitting on the other side of the room could best read it presumably.

Sherlock turned the device back around so that he could once again gaze upon the screen and stroke it with unseemly fondness. “You met the prospective parents?”

“Yes. They said they were really anxious to start a family.”

Something in her tone prompted him to ask, “Did you have reason to suspect that wasn’t true?”

Amber looked from one man to the other, her cheeks burning a little hotter. Perspiration glistened on her forehead and she swiped at it. “I don’t want to offend anyone. Honestly, I haven’t been around that many gay people so I don’t presume to know how they ought to act when they’re…together. I may be a Christian, but I’m also a scientist– not a Christian Scientist, that’s a whole other deal. Suffice it to say they have a different take on the matter. But my take is, well, it’s super hard to stay prejudiced about love once you know it’s all electro-chemical reactions in the brain. If two people come together because of excitatory neurons then that’s God smiling down on ‘em I figure. They ought to be able to stand before their Lord and Savior and pledge themselves to each other in holy matrimony.”

John had never seen Sherlock’s mouth stay open for so long with nothing coming out of it. He seemed to have short-circuited somehow, unable to work out how anyone could hold two such disparate views inside the same head without imploding 

“Um. Okay then,” he said, after a bit. “I’m assuming from your…disclaimer that they didn’t behave in a manner you thought in keeping with either being gay or being married.”

“No sir. Not enough to raise babies together. They just didn’t seem comfortable with each other at all, I mean not the way…” She looked at Sherlock then John, “y’all. Do.”

“Oh dear God,” John moaned. 

Why? Why did this keep happening? Was it really so strange that two men of a certain age were sharing a flat in Central London? London was hellishly expensive. He could see why people might think Sherlock was gay, and he might very well be, John had no clear idea at this point. Sherlock didn’t seem to care about sex at all either way. But _him?_ Harry always told him his god-awful taste in clothing made it obvious. That’s one of the reasons he’d liked the military. He never had to pick out his clothes. 

“My friend John here would very much like to tell you that we are not, in fact, a romantic couple,” Sherlock was saying, “and that he is most definitely not gay.”

“Oh my goodness,” Amber cried, hands flying up to cover her face, “I’m so embarrassed—“

“It’s okay,” John said, sighing heavily, “don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll notice how he still didn’t assert it himself, other than through aggressive sighing. And why not, you may ask, if it’s so important to him? I’ll tell you—“

“Oh could you?” John said. “That’d be great.”

“He doesn’t assert it for fear of appearing homophobic to a virtual stranger.”

Damn. That was a little spot on, actually. It was Harriet’s fault. She’d blustered and badgered and brow-beaten him from the time she was thirteen on. The merest sniff of anti-gay sentiment from him or his mates would send her off, even when it wasn’t actually present. 

“The problem with trying not to offend,” Sherlock said, ostensibly to Amber, “is that we often cripple ourselves through second-guessing. You made an assumption based on our level of comfort with each other that we are romantically involved, which means that the couple you observed had no discernable connection at all other than the one they told you existed. Am I right?” She nodded. “I know you were under some duress because of your mother’s condition, but you weren’t yet pregnant, so no doubt your good scientific brain was engaged on some level. Something about them didn’t add up.”

“Yeah, you’re right. They might have been gay. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of experience with that, but they were not intimate in a way that people would be if they were committing themselves to starting a family. I remember at one point Mr. Harman said how much they were hoping for twins, one for each of them, and Mr. Lebowitz went to take his hand and Mr. Harman jerked his hand back, just for a second, you know. He looked startled like he hadn’t expected physical contact to be involved. Then it was all fine, and they were holding hands like nothing happened. I mean, even allowing for the awkwardness of the situation or nerves or whatever, it didn’t click right.” 

“Did they give you a reason that they were so interested in you in particular?”

Her lips pressed together in a pained grimace, and she shifted in the chair with a soft groan, her hands anxiously roaming the landscape of her belly. 

"Amber?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” she said, “they’re moving around a lot right now— uh, I guess, I guess I looked a lot like Mr. Harman’s sister who’d died in a car accident. It kind of freaked me out actually. I almost left, but then Megan started talking about compensation and it was – it was just so much money.”

“How much?”

She swallowed. “Fifty thousand dollars.” 

Sherlock gave a low whistle. “That’s twice the going rate for first time surrogacy.” 

“I know. And they offered five thousand extra for twins.” 

“How were you to be paid?”

“At the start of the second trimester, um, in September, when it looked certain that the twins were around for the long haul, I got fifteen thousand. I’m supposed to get the rest after they’re born. Honestly, at this point I just want to give the babies over to the dads and go home. If you find them could you tell them I don’t care about the money, I mean, if this is all because of the money they don’t have to give me anything else but a ticket home. ” 

“Did they know about your mother’s cancer?”

“I told them.” She looked away, looked around the room, looked at her hands, at anything but Sherlock’s unwavering gaze. “I had to.”

He stared at her, palms pressed together, fingertips tapping against his lips. He was about to ask a question and he already knew the answer. Amber looked drawn, pale now except for the feverish splotches of red high on her cheeks. Her expression was tired and resigned and painfully, painfully sad. John stood up as if he might need to do something though he had no idea what. When he spoke, Sherlock’s words were carefully measured. “Amber? Did you provide the eggs for fertilization? Is that why they paid you so much more?”

She drew in a breath through her nose and out through her mouth. She blinked. A tear slipped down her cheek. 

Sherlock was out of his chair and out the door. 

***

He hadn’t gone very far. John knew he wouldn’t. He had no coat after all. Or shoes. He found him leaning against the wall next to Speedy’s street-front window smoking a cigarette. 

“Where’d you get that?” John asked waving his hand through the grey haze hanging in the air. 

“Some kid on a bike.” 

“What’s going on then?”

“She’s an idiot.” 

“Isn’t that everyone as far as you’re concerned?”

“She’s also screwed. Apparently without the benefit of any actual screwing. She’s the biological mother! If these…people don’t show up and take their infants off her hands, she’s stuck with them. She can’t even put them up for adoption without consent of the father -- or fathers as the case may be, because there’s a legally binding contract involved. She should have hired herself a solicitor. She should have had her own lawyer back in the states. That’s what she needs.”

“She came to you.”

“This isn’t my area! Babies and crying women—gah!” 

“What about finding the couple then? That’s what she came to you for in first place.”

“Three possibilities. One: They’ve simply changed their minds. What she witnessed could have been a couple whose relationship was in trouble. Maybe one of them thought having children would save the marriage–“ At John’s look he said, “Yes, I rejected that as well.”

“Or?”

“They’re dead, is second on the list, though no persons going by that hyphenated name have died in the last month or so. Not in England anyway.” John was long past being surprised at how quickly Sherlock could access information. “Amber’s airline tickets and hotel expenses were paid for by someone. She’s been in London for a month, give or take a day. The Harman-Lebowitz’s are missing, but whether by accident or design I couldn’t tell you.” Sherlock took a long, slow drag off the cigarette and exhaled a steady stream of gray smoke. “And number three: exactly what she suspected and ignored from the beginning. They misrepresented themselves to her. They were fakes. She’s being used.” 

“But for what? Why would anyone do that?”

Sherlock pushed away from the wall and stubbed the cigarette onto the bricks. “Not enough data.” He glanced at the open door that led up to their flat. “She brought her cases from the hotel. Whoever was paying has stopped paying. She has no place to go. You do realize that?”

“Ah. Shit. I haven’t got any money until the fifteenth.”

“You see. It’s _that_ , that very thing. I say she hasn’t got any place to go and your first thought is to give her money. Your own money!”

“Which I don’t have until the fifteenth. You’ve got money, haven’t you?”

“Women’s shelter?”

“She’s not a victim of domestic violence, unless you brow-beating her counts.”

“There’s probably a church charity or something. She a bit churchy.”

“Seriously?”

“She’s not staying here!”

“I didn’t suggest it.”

“You had the face.”

“Will you shut up about the face, please?” 

“We could drop her off at hospital and then run like hell.”

John clapped him on the back. “Ah. Spoken like a true man. Your mother would be so proud. Come on, Sherlock, buck up, balls out. You can do it. Anyway, you’ve got to because your feet are turning blue.”

***

Amber wasn’t in the sitting room. John went looking for her and came back saying, “She found the toilet.” Then, “What the hell are you doing?” 

Sherlock had Amber’s backpack upended and the contents spread out on the floor. 

_\-- two passports UK, US (dual citizenship!), two bottles of Dasani, prenatal vitamins(30 out of 60 left, wallet (driving license, state of Alabama issued to Amber Melissa Call, Wells Fargo Bank debit card, Orchard Bank MasterCard, University of Alabama at Birmingham student ID, ten pound note, no coins), pantyliners (six, no box), address book (later), antacids, gum, complimentary hand lotions, shampoos and conditioners from the Bedford Hotel in Russell Square, sunglasses, make-up bag (not wearing makeup), travel toothbrush and toothpaste, iPod nano (playlist), Dell notebook computer, (later), Nokia mobile (contact list), Boots bag with receipt (disposable enemas, two purchased, one in bag), tea packets, (hand made, herbal mixture)—oh. Oh, of course._

He turned one of the tea bags over and over, brought it to his nose and inhaled, wondering if she’d made them up herself or had someone do it. She could have got the filter papers anywhere, Culpepper’s or someplace like that, but he suspected the herbs inside were a different matter. He unfolded the top of the bag and poured the herbs into his palm. 

John was leaning over him now. “Is that what she’s got in her travel mug?” 

Sherlock shrugged. He couldn’t know without testing it but it was very likely. He pushed at a bit purplish green with a fingernail. “This is mentha pulegium - pennyroyal. Not sure about this bit here. Mmm, some celery seeds, juniper berries. This root – this is troublesome.” He put it in his mouth, chewed and spat it back into his hand. “Bitter, heavy on the alkaloids. Could be blue cohosh. Blue cohosh would be hard for her to purchase here though. It’s regulated. She may have got it in the States. I’d need a lab to determine the chemical compounds, but I’m confident she’s fully aware of the chemical compounds.” He looked up into John’s troubled face. “If one hasn’t access to synthetic oxytocin ...“

John straightened abruptly, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the loo. 

“She purchased two disposal enemas. There’s only one in her pack. I’m not saying she’s doing that in there. More likely she tried it this morning and it didn’t work.”

There came a crash and a cry and the heavy thud of a body falling just as he’d expected. John took off at a run. Sherlock righted the backpack, opened all the pockets and removed whatever he found. 

More chewing gum, half a chocolate bar, individual packets of cream crackers crushed to dust—

He could hear John ramming his shoulder against the door.

\---copy of last month’s _Elle._ White leather-bound bible, inscribed. Small notebook with symbols and subscripts - _oh, here’s where she tried to work it out, the best chemical compounds for the job_ \- mechanical pencils, old receipts, validated boarding pass, folded printed programme—

_In Memoriam - Shoshanna Elizabeth Call, b. February 22, 1966, d. September 30, 2009 – a celebration of life, love, and music, 2PM, November 7, 2009…”_

Well. That explained something. He plucked the Pink Ribbon tack pin from the floor and fastened it onto the front pocket of her backpack again. Then he went to the table, picked up his Blackberry and rang for an ambulance.


	3. Chapter 3

A nascent hypothesis about Amber’s employers had formed around the irritant of her presence -- an altogether dull hypothesis but most likely the truth. He’d meant to do a lot of things towards the proving of it, just to get it (and her) out of his head. But things escalated so quickly and with such intensity that he’d found himself entirely occupied fetching towels and Salvo-Gel and relaying vitals to dispatchers. He hadn’t checked her coat pockets when he’d had the opportunity. So there it was, the coat, still draped over the back of the chair. 

The moment he set eyes on Amber in her bright red coat, he saw that she had refused to spend money on anything related to her pregnancy. The coat was only the outermost layer of things not designed to accommodate pregnancy. Of course it made sense now he knew Amber’s mother was dead -- had died before the surrogate pregnancy had been able to benefit either of them. 

The coat was the color of cherries (and of the lipstick in her makeup bag). It was at least three years old, and most of the hard wear had been in the past month here in London. Milder winters where she was from. Wool blend, made in Sri Lanka. Simple trench style, two of the buttons had come off at some point, sewn back on, clumsily, in a thread that didn’t quite match. It smelled of the street and of close places and of those over-scented complimentary bath products from the hotel. She’d chosen the coat in happier times, partly for the brand name “London Fog,” a sentiment about a place she’d hoped to see, or a person she longed to meet - an idealized fantasy figure, likely her father based on the two passports. 

Besom pockets, but roomy. The Peruvian hat was stuffed into one of them and the other had gloves, but he’d seen what trouble it’d been for her to bend or reach. Easy pockets to slide a hand into if she needed something important on the spur. Yet she hadn’t kept her mobile in it. Unless she had another, a prepay mobile just for—

John came barreling through the door at that moment and read Sherlock’s expression all wrong (guilty, caught-in-the-act), and snatched the coat out of his hands. 

“They’re taking her to UCH,” he said. “She needs her ID.” 

She probably didn’t need her coat at that moment but whatever. Sherlock scooped up Amber’s wallet and handed it to him. John cast a hurried though baleful eye at the mess of her belongings still on the floor. “I guess the rest can wait. I’m riding along.” And then he was shooting back down and outside and away with the sirens. 

Sherlock couldn’t understand why John was so invested in this girl so quickly, even given his proclivities towards big-eyed damsels in distress. But seeing as Sherlock had nothing else on and all her stuff still littered the floor, he might as well look through her phone contacts, her texts and message logs, maybe make a few calls of his own. 

He really _really_ had intended to do that.

But then Molly rang him -- her actual voice squeaking in his ear, a body dropped in her lap, not literally, ha ha ha and get this, oh my god! anaphylaxis from stinging ants! Which was quite rare, especially in England. Of course, he had to go see. He practically tripped over Amber’s cases on the way out. Anaphylaxis proved to be an elaborate cover for a rather sad little murder, which was a great improvement on the evening. 

***

“I can’t find her cases. Do you know what happened to them?” 

Cases. The stinging ants had led Sherlock in an interesting direction about an unsolved kidnapping case from 2007, wife paid ransom, kidnappers disappeared, husband’s body never found though Sherlock had a pretty good inkling where it might be found now. 

He hadn’t been on his game back then because—well, he was clean now, so that was not at issue. And, given other developments slowly coming to a bubble about town, he suspected he’d be hearing from the Yard before the end of the day. He flicked a glance at John who had his coat on, keys in hand, Amber’s backpack slung over one shoulder and a mild expression of irritation on his face. Why? What now? “What?” 

“Those two cases that were in the entry? One was a big wheelie and the other like a carry-on thing? Ugly yellow plaid? Oh for fuck’s sake, Sherlock! Amber’s luggage, what did you do with it?”

“I didn’t do anything with it. Ask Mrs. Hudson.” 

“She’s out. I was going take them with me. I’m off to see Amber in hospital.”

“Yes, I’d cleverly deduced that part.” He lifted his rear off the sofa just enough to slip his mobile into the pocket of his trousers then flopped back down again.

John’s gaze searched the floor like a landmine sweeper. “I trust I’ve got everything you took out?” He touched the strap of the backpack.

Oh. Well. Except for the day planner with the addresses and phone numbers in it. He’d put that into the pocket of his coat last night in case Molly’s excitement about stinging ants proved unwarranted. 

“I should have picked up after. Sorry.” Apologies were golden in situations like these.

“That’s all right,” John said. “You had good intentions. Probably.”

Yes. _Result._

“I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”

Sherlock suppressed a shudder. Unsuccessfully. “I’ve seen more of that woman’s business than I care to see of any woman for the rest of my life. Possibly longer.” 

John chuckled softly. “Yeah, the, uh, the _business_ doesn’t look like that most of the time.”

“I am familiar with how the business usually looks, John.”

“Huh.” Oh dear god, he’d done it now. John’s tiny antennae were unfurled, waving about and tasting the air for hints of history. “O-kay. But for clarity, are we talking about a living woman? I mean a live female woman? Because, you know, dead bodies? Not really how the business usually looks, either. Completely different viewing experience, live. Just, FYI.” 

_FYI? Really? Oh, and isn’t the good doctor confident of his superior knowledge in this department? Smug twat._

Sherlock swung his legs over the edge of the sofa, planted his feet firmly on the floor and slapped his knees in readiness. “Know what? I’ve changed my mind.” He gave John his sunniest and most disarming smile. “I’m anxious to see the results of Amber’s self-induced labour.”

“I hope you’re referring to babies right now.” 

***

When John returned to the main reception lobby, Sherlock was sat between a boy about ten or eleven years old, and a small girl, maybe four. The boy was deeply involved in a handheld video game judging by the loud, quick smacking of chewing gum, the slightly disturbing bouncing of his eyeballs, and the growls and grunts coming out of him. The girl was perched on her knees on the seat of the chair next to Sherlock, facing sideways, her little hands gripping the armrest, her body almost touching his shoulder. She wore a solemn look of concentration as she watched him manipulating the rolling, scrolling rush of information on the little screen of his Blackberry. Sherlock was either oblivious, ignoring her, or being uncharacteristically tolerant. The way he was slightly turned in his own seat in order to make it easier for her to watch, indicated the later. It was such a curious tableau that John got out his phone to snap a quick picture—

“Don’t do it,” Sherlock said with a sharp dart of his eyes. He noted the backpack still over John’s shoulder. “She’s not here anymore, I take it?”

“She’s been moved. To a private facility. They won’t tell me where.”

“You mentioned the part about you being a doctor and saving her life and all that.”

The little girl looked at John with keen interest from under a wispy fringe of fine brown hair. It was strangely unnerving. “Well, I don’t know that I saved her life—“

“Stop being humble, it’s unbecoming.”

“Fine. I mentioned something to that effect, yes. I was then informed that she and the twins are doing well, and that they really shouldn’t be telling me even that. Apparently any further information is under restriction at the request for privacy set by the family. You’d think it was the goddamned royal family the way they’re--” He choked off the rest of the sentence, aware of the little girl’s eyes still on him. 

“The dads showed up then?” Sherlock said. “Good of them.” 

“You have a suspicious frown going.” 

“I knew I should have checked her coat pockets. If you hadn’t been so grabby--” 

“Yes, of course, my fault. Anyway, I also mentioned that I had some items of hers that she might need returned to her and they suggested I take it up with hospital administration.” Sherlock groaned. They both knew what that meant. 

Sherlock got to his feet, pocketed his device and shooed the little girl away wordlessly. She went to the boy and stood in front of his knees. When she realized he wasn’t going to acknowledge her she draped her tiny body across his lap and stuck a thumb in her mouth. A small twitch of annoyance was the only rise she got out of him. 

“Well, this won’t do.” Sherlock said. John wasn’t sure if he meant the situation with the siblings, with Amber, or if it was a generic statement to no one in particular. Hands on his hips, the detective gnawed his lower lip a moment. Then he leaned forward and snapped his fingers in the boy’s face. “Oi. Marcus. I need a piece of gum.” 

The little girl straightened immediately and pushed on her brother’s legs to get his attention. The boy, Marcus, looked up from his game with the same glassy-eyed blank confusion that every gamer wears upon being rudely pulled from the virtual world. The inevitable irritation at being interrupted settled between his brows. “Wot?”

“I need a piece of gum.” 

Marcus blinked a couple of times, staring at Sherlock’s outstretched hand. 

The little girl shoved against his knees again. “He needs gum,” she whispered with solemn urgency. “ _Give him gum_.” 

“I’ve only got one piece left!”

“Yes, and you’ll give it over or I’ll tell your mum you let a strange man look after your sister while you played Drill Dozer.”

Marcus’s eyes got very round then. He dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a tiny, slightly bent stick of gum barely covered by paper and mostly by lint. He slapped it into Sherlock’s waiting palm with a glower. Everything was so unfair at that age. 

Sherlock removed the paper and stuck the gum in his mouth, chewing vigorously. John waited for clarification, but even less was forthcoming as Sherlock headed towards the lifts, tossing John his greatcoat, and pulling his shirt tails out of his trousers as he walked. While they waited for the lift doors to open, he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. “I do believe the Harman-Lebowitz family owes us for new towels.”

John laughed. “At the very least.” 

On the labour ward, he hung back as Sherlock approached the nurse’s station. He had no idea what was going to happen but he desperately needed to see it. When it happened he was torn between mortification and awe. 

“Excuse me? Excuse me, ma’am? Sir? Ma’am? Hey, how y’all doing? Great. I understand my little sister Amber was brought in here yesterday? She’s having a baby, _had_ a baby, or I guess she’s been blessed with two of ‘em, praise the Lord. Do y’all know which room she’s in? Amber? Amber Call?” 

The reaction to the accent happened in tandem with an assessment of his appearance, his gum-chewing earnestness, his filial anxiety, his charm. And they were charmed, the nurses, midwives, medical assistants, male and female alike. Sherlock’s looks worked in his favor, which often saved him on those many occasions when all the other failings in his personality did not. In this case the looks worked even better as John realized the coloring and features were similar enough to Amber’s at a glance that anyone who’d been in contact with her, however briefly, probably wouldn’t question the relationship. 

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, sir, Miss Call is no longer under our care,” said a woman with spiky faded blonde hair.

“We told the other gentleman,” an Asian nurse said, jerking his chin in John’s direction. Too late to duck out of sight, John tried to disappear into his clothes like a turtle. Sherlock turned and looked right through him. He had no idea who that man with the backpack was and what did this have to do with his sister?

“She’s been moved to a private hospital sir. Her and the babies,” another nurse said, an older woman, possibly the ward nurse. John couldn’t remember all the new scrub colors. Her mouth pinched up ugly when she uttered the word “private” though. 

“I don’t understand,” Sherlock said, “I thought all your hospitals were, y’know… _socialized_.” The last he whispered.

“Well, those with money to spare often prefer to pay. They seem to feel they have better treatment options.”

“Really?” said Amber’s fake brother, taking a good long look around him. “I don’t know. This seems pretty state-of-the-art to me.” Ah, he’d hit the mark. The undercurrent of resentment was so palpable it practically walked up and slapped John in the face. 

The Asian nurse sniffed. “Well, we are rated highest in the entire country for neo-natal care.” He looked to be a special care nurse, hence the special sense of insult. Nobody disses University College Hospital, damn it. “It’s what the family wanted. Nothing we can do.”

“ _I’m_ her family. She’s my baby sister and I’ve been on a plane for ten hours to get here. I just, I really need to see her. Ever since our momma died last year – “ He dropped his gaze, blinking back what John could only assume to be tears. Soft sounds of sympathy all around. He’d hooked them proper now. “I need to see her. Her and the babies, they’re the only family I got left, can you understand that?” 

The nurses exchanged looks and the looks were about more than the secret of Amber’s location. They knew she was a surrogate and now suspected her brother didn’t have a clue. Pinchy-Mouth looked about to speak, but Asian Special Care said, “No! No way! I’m not dealing with legal over this.” He glanced at Sherlock again, “Look, I’m very sorry, I really am, but there’ve been a lot of extra measures taken recently and we could get sacked for anything that smacks of breech of patient right to privacy, can _you_ understand? It’s our jobs on the line.”

A young medical assistant huffed in irritation. “This is stupid. And cruel. We can give him a hint. A common knowledge hint.” The others looked away quickly, swallowed loudly, cleared throats, and started shuffling things around, leaving the lowest on the rung to take the risk. “You have internet on your mobile?” 

“My what?” Sherlock asked. “My cell phone?” 

Bloody hell, John thought, the man was so good at this it was almost terrifying.

The woman nodded. “Google the hospital where princesses were born.”

And there it was. Sherlock thanked her for her efforts. He turned, caught John’s look and winked. The Portland Hospital. Easy peasy.

In the lift, John started laughing. Sherlock tossed the gum in the tiny bin and eyed him quizzically. 

“Praise the Lord?” 

“What can I say? The spirit moved me.”

They were still laughing when the lift doors opened and Sherlock’s mobile chirped. A text from Lestrade John figured, from the combination of smug and anticipation on Sherlock’s face. 

“Are you up for some fun?”

“Yeah. Definitely.” John said. “Can we drop this off first?” The backpack, which had become a burden of responsibility he couldn’t seem to get shed of. 

“Right now? We know where she is. We can drop it off tomorrow.” Sherlock was doing things with his phone and waving down a taxi and already somewhere else in his head. “It’s a five minute walk from the flat.” 

So John said okay. He said okay and got into the cab. 

The backpack ended up sitting outside the bathroom door for several days. He’d dropped it there when he hopped in the shower, meaning to take it round the hospital as soon as he was dressed again, except of course Sherlock texted, saying he needed his _other_ wallet, the one with questionable assortment of ID’s, the one he couldn’t be arsed to come get himself. 

He rang Portland Hospital twice during that time. The first he was on hold maybe thirty seconds before Sherlock took the phone away and had him blowing into a breathalyzer. The second time he was told Amber had been released and gone home. 

“I don’t know how she can do that, seeing as how I’ve got her passports.”

“I’m- I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you, sir. She’s been released and as far as we know, she’s home with her family.”

“What family? In Alabama? She just gave birth after a dangerous attempt at self-inducing labour. And you’re putting her on a plane back to the US? What the hell?”

“I’m sorry, sir. Who did you say you were again?”

“ _Doctor_ John Watson. I was with her when she went into labour. I—“

“Oh. I see. Um. I’m going to put you in contact with our administrative supervisor, all right? Will you hold, please?”

“John! On your left! Watch out!” 

So that was the end of that call. And, temporarily, his phone 

A fortnight later, he picked up the backpack and set it decisively on the dining table. “I suppose I could send it to her.”

Sherlock didn’t respond. He was stretched out on the sofa still in pajamas, an indolent slug with a broadsheet over his face and upper torso. He’d given up reading the paper because it was just soooo boring. 

“Passport has her address on it. Maybe? Or something in here with an address. I could ship the whole lot back, right?” Still no response. He unzipped the top and peered inside. A thought occurred, “Did we ever find out what happened to her luggage?”

“Oh my god!” Sherlock exclaimed, whipping the paper from his face in a crushing fist. “What the hell are you going on about?”

He ignored Sherlock’s overreaction -- it was a lot easier to do that now -- and filled with a sudden overwhelming sense of urgency, ran downstairs to ask Mrs. Hudson about the cases. 

“Oh,” she said, after a bit of prompting, “yes, I remember. They were very bright weren’t they? No trouble spotting those on the carousel. A driver from Delta airline came, in a van from Gatwick. Nice young man. He picked them up.” 

“When did this happen?”

“Oh, quite early. Six or so. You two hadn’t stirred yet. I was up. I didn’t mind.” 

_The very next morning!_

“Was it a scheduled pick up, had he been called…?”

“I didn’t ask, dear.”

“Oh right, well, thank you, Mrs. Hudson.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, John, could you persuade Sherlock to be out of the flat this evening, or at least ask him not to stomp about and bang on things. I’m having the girls over for cards and he does like to make a nuisance of himself when they’re here. He could charm the pants right off of them if he’d a mind.” John closed his eyes briefly to shut out the image. “But no,” she went on, “he’s got to be rude, frighten them out the door. He can be such a—“ She stopped then, hand pressed to her chest, frustrated just thinking about it.

“Baby?” John offered.

“I was going to say dick.” 

“And that as well. I’ll try. I’m at work most of the day though. Can’t make any promises.” 

Back in the flat, he told Sherlock about Amber’s cases and the airport van first. “I mean, why would she arrange to have her cases taken to the airport, how would she have the time or forethought, when she was here, dosing herself with poison to induce labour?”

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “She wouldn’t obviously.”

“When I talked to Portland Hospital I was told she’d been released and sent home to be with her family. Her _family_ , Sherlock. Whatever family she has left is in Alabama. And I know for a fact, no ethically responsible doctor would have cleared her for an eight to ten hour flight that soon. The risk of a postpartum infection, particularly in her case, would be a huge concern. Plus, she had no passport.”

“Irresponsible doctors can be bought. Emergency passports can be obtained in hours,” Sherlock said, but he was only stating facts, not what he thought happened. 

John buttoned his collar and looked in the mirror as he knotted his tie. “Something’s not right,” he said to Sherlock’s reflection. “I have a bad feeling about it. I know it’s not very exciting, but would you look into it? Find out what happened? I’d like to know she’s okay.”

He could see Sherlock’s baffled expression and he turned around. Probably stopped listening at the mention of feelings. 

“Where are you going?” 

“I’m filling in for Sarah’s friend at that pediatric clinic in Harley Street.” He picked up his jacket off the back of the chair. “I told you.” 

“Was I here?”

John sighed heavily. “Yes. You were. I know my presence, or even my consciousness, isn’t required for you to have a conversation with me—“

“How long?”

“Two weeks. The money’s too good to pass up. So you’ll have to get along without me.”

“I got along quite well before you came along.”

“Okay then. So you’ll look into this Amber thing?”

“John, I said I will.”

“You didn’t actually, but thanks. Oh, and Mrs. Hudson would like you to stop being dick when her friends are over.” 

“I’m only trying to keep her honest. She cheats at cards.”

He went to work. Found he did not enjoy working with children all that much. But he did meet a lovely woman and ended up getting laid regularly for a while until she got back together with her ex. He’d thought to ask Sherlock about Amber twice in that time. Sherlock never directly said he was pursuing an investigation, but he never said he wasn’t either. He’d taken the backpack into his bedroom though, maybe just to keep John from asking. 

Out of sight out of mind it seemed. Except for the occasional jerking sudden awareness at moments when he wasn’t free to do anything about it, John forgot. After a few weeks even that stopped happening. 

Until he saw her body in that filthy red coat and realized he’d never have the luxury of forgetfulness where Amber was concerned. Not for the rest of his life.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock Holmes did not believe in premonitions. Premonitory signs were data transmitted through the sensorium and kinesthesia, unconsciously perceived by inattentive minds. All the obvious connections between sensation and observation were therefore missed, dismissed or ignored. Sherlock only ignored things he chose to ignore. 

Which is why, after Lestrade rang off he interpreted the strange shudder running up his spine and out the top of his head as the sign of a flu coming on. He grabbed a handful of vitamins, gulped them down with tepid tea and was out the door. 

“That won’t do any good,” John pointed out, hurriedly pulling on a jacket as he followed him into the street. “And will likely only make you nauseous.” 

“You told me I should take vitamin supplements.” Sherlock’s voice contained an element of petulant accusation, prepared in advance for the failure of vitamin supplements and John’s advice. 

“With your toast! As a preventative measure. To make up for the many ways you abuse your body. If you’ve caught a bug, vitamins won’t help much after the fact.” 

“Not terribly useful to me then,” Sherlock said, and hailed a taxi. 

John tried a different tact. “Look. I have some oscillococcium back in the flat if you really think you’re coming down with something. Worth a shot.”

But a cab was already at the kerb and Sherlock was already climbing in. With a resigned sigh, John got in after him. Sherlock gave the address to the driver and settled back into the seat, his eyes scanning the traffic.

“She must have been _very_ attractive,” he said after a moment.

John, accustomed to, but still never quite following, the abrupt segues and weird nonsequiturs of his flat mate, asked, “Who? The victim?” Was there a victim? He realized he had no idea, not even of where they were going. 

“The rep that gave you the samples of oscillococcium. Unless you’ve suddenly become a proponent of homeopathy?” John could feel his face heating up. “Doubtless, she extolled the virtues and amazing properties of a bacterium found in duck offal. You probably agreed to try it yourself and let her know, thereby establishing a sound reason to contact her via her mobile number on the card she gave you.” He cocked an eye John’s direction, “I assume she was quite the hottie. Pharma reps usually are.” 

“Pharmaceutical sales reps don’t push Newton’s complexes and Bach flower remedies as a rule, but yes, she was quite fit.”

Sherlock’s smile was bright but fleeting, quickly giving way to impatience and a loud complaint, “Come on, man! We could have walked there faster!” 

***

Sgt Donovan escorted them past the cordon. She seemed uncharacteristically subdued, didn’t address him as “freak” even once. Sherlock was fairly certain this was not because she’d been asked to be polite to him. It was something about the crime scene caused her strange quiescence. 

“Sewer flusher found the body,” she said as they approached the huddle of activity. Sherlock saw the worker in question, hunched and visibly shaken as a young PC tried to take a preliminary statement. “Poor guy thought he’d located a fat berg. I guess they get a lot of those along this part of the Embankment. Fat bergs I mean. Not bodies.” 

Sewer bodies were challenging, so many variables to factor in. He’d been quite looking forward to it. The flutter in his stomach became a queasy churning. 

John nudged his arm. “You all right?” 

“The vitamins. Don’t make me say it.” 

John chuckled. “Yeah. Okay. It’s enough that you know I was right. Emergency techs usually keep biscuits or crisps in the ambulance. I’ll go find you something.” He headed toward the flashing lights. 

Near the manhole, down which the poor unlucky sewer worker had discovered a body instead of a mountain of congealed illegally dumped cooking oil and wet-wipes, Lestrade was on his phone, turned away from Sherlock in partial profile. A couple of other sewer workers outfitted in white and yellow coveralls and hip waders were standing near it as well. Forensics Services people, in similar protective gear, wandered to and fro with take away cups of tea or coffee. Lyerla was the forensics Scene of Crime officer, which was a relief. He didn’t feel up to a confrontation with Anderson. Lyerla hadn’t worked with him much and so didn’t actively hate him yet.

Still, all the milling about meant they were either waiting on him with growing resentment, or they thought they’d finished, when in fact they were likely milling about all over the important bits. 

Lestrade pocketed his mobile, and seeing Sherlock standing apart from the action, raised a hand and a querulous brow. The milling people moved and shifted and suddenly he had a clear view of a body wrapped in a plastic sheet and laid on a tarp on the paving, a body that was supposed to be in the sewer. 

What the hell?

“What the hell?” he said hotly, closing the distance between Lestrade and himself in a couple of long strides. “You’ve hauled it out already? Why am I here? Why are you wasting my time? How can I work if I’m not able to examine the body where it was found, _how_ it was found?” 

Lestrade drew back with a grimace of irritation. His unflappable good nature was stretched thin today. “Which question would you like me to answer first?”

“Why am I here?”

“You’re here because I thought you might recognize the victim.” Lestrade’s brows furrowed and he cocked his head. “I thought I made that clear on the phone.” 

“You did not.” 

“You probably stopped listening after ‘body in the sewer.’ Anyway….” He made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the tarp. Lyerla, crouched beside the body, turned her head away briefly to take a deep breath before peeling back the plastic sheet. 

The coat was filthy, soaked through and torn up, but still recognizably red wool under the muck, a red wool trench coat with besom pockets. Buttons missing, one still hanging by a thread he knew wouldn’t match. The face was bloated, distorted and swaths of skin had been blasted away by water pressure. Black hair was strewn across the raw, naked planes of cheeks and chin like clumps of oily sea weed. He gulped so loud he could hear it echoing inside his head. 

“Oh, well,” he said softly, “that’s – that’s not good.” 

“Is it her? The one I sent your way? Do you recognize her?”

“I – I recognize the coat.” A terrible anxiety washed over him quite suddenly -- _John mustn’t see this. Don’t let him see. Not until I can--_

“Oh my God.” _Too late_. “Oh no, oh my God...”

“John—“

The good doctor was stood, bag of crisps clenched in one fist, the fingers of his other hand curled against the side of his gaping mouth. Sherlock could almost hear the man’s heart hammering at his ribcage. John tore his gaze away from the body to fix on Sherlock an expression so raw that the ever-so-brilliant consulting detective stumbled back a step as if he’d been shoved hard in the chest. 

“I thought you— you said— I asked you to find out – to make sure she was okay. Jesus. Jesus Christ.” He leaned forward suddenly, bracing his hands on his knees like he was going to be sick.

John had seen bodies blown to bits on the battlefield. He’d seen the dead in all states of disarray and decomposition. How could this make him ill? How could this be worse? “John, listen to me. This isn’t Amber, I know it looks as if it might be her—“

“Sherlock…” Lestrade’s vocal tone was the same one he used when breaking terrible news to the families of murder victims. “She had a wallet with ID on her.” 

Sgt. Donovan stepped into Sherlock’s space. She held up a crinkled, sodden, plastic-coated driving license between a nitrile covered thumb and forefinger. Her mouth was pinched with grim distaste yet she still managed to seem smug about it.

“I wasn’t sure if this was the same woman, “Lestrade said, “The name seemed familiar but I wasn’t the one who took her report. I just happened to be walking by on my way to lunch, heard the accent. We couldn’t do much for her so I gave her your number. Of course, the woman I saw was really pregnant and this one…isn’t. Thought maybe she’d come to see you… which…” He looked from one man to the other, “she did? Apparently. We weren’t sure if we needed to be looking for the remains of an infant or… or what.” Lestrade looked away scratching at the back of his neck. 

Sherlock thought he understood this reticence. “No one wants to look for dead babies. I get it. There’s no need to put anyone through that.” 

“Why do you say that?” John croaked out. He cleared his voice and when he spoke again there was a combative edge to it. “She came to see you. She gave birth to twins the same night. They might very well need to look for the remains of infants down there.”

“No. _Really_. They don’t. Infants are rarely the victims of murder, in any case.”

“Except by their mummies and daddies,” Donovan pointed out.

“This woman didn’t dive into the sewers, babes in arms. You’d just be wasting time and resources--“

“Jesus,” Donovan muttered, shaking her head.

“Should I have paid you?” John asked suddenly. 

“What?”

“I fucking _asked_ you, and you said you would. Would you have done it if I’d offered to pay you?”

The question shocked the air from his lungs. He couldn’t get words to come out of his mouth for several long excruciating seconds. “I rarely accept remuneration for my work, as you know, often to your consternation.”

“You wanted to charge her.”

“No. I didn’t want to deal with her at all. You asked me to and I said I would. You didn’t exactly follow up on my progress though, did you? Too busy banging your married girlfriend as I recall.” 

There was a very _very_ awkward silence in which the only sounds were traffic and people clearing their throats or tittering nervously. 

Premonitions are premonitions because they’re only realized in hindsight, when all the subtle clues and warning signs you blithely ignored come back to bite you in the arse. 

John had gone stone still, his default response when under extreme stress. “Separated,” he said coolly. “She’d been separated for eight months.” 

Sherlock knew he was looking at the same man who’d shot a murderous cabbie through a window from a building across the way, yet he kept talking. “Does that knowledge alleviate some of the guilt you’re feeling right now?” 

“Jesus, Sherlock,” Lestrade muttered, rubbing at the furrow between his brows. 

“No.” John said. “Is that how you’re justifying it to yourself? Amber’s dead because I wasn’t there to remind you to – what? Do your chores? Keep your promises?”

“I don’t need justification! Do you know why? Because _that_ —“ He thrust an arm in the direction of the body, “That. Is. Not. Amber.”

Relief, hope, something of the kind, flickered briefly on John’s face before despair washed over him again. Even if he wanted to believe it, it was clear from his demeanor that he couldn’t get past his own sense of responsibility. “It’s somebody though, Sherlock. Somebody in her coat, carrying her ID.” 

“No one you know.”

“That doesn’t – that’s not even –“ He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyelids. “Ah, Christ, yeah, I can’t – I can’t do this.” And he started walking. 

The clenching in Sherlock’s gut intensified. “What just happened?” 

“You’ll figure it out.” To his credit, Lestrade did not give pause to dramatic exits. “What makes you think this isn’t Amber Call?” 

After a moment, Sherlock dragged his focus back to the matter at hand. “Um…well, one very important piece of _physical_ evidence.” _Which I would have pointed out sooner if John hadn’t said what he said_. “Amber had a tattoo on her right ankle, an unusual tattoo -- the electron configuration of copper.” At Lestrade’s blank expression, he sighed. “It’s a kind of notation for identifying elements of the periodic table. The letters and numbers were arranged in a flying geese formation. Just above the malleolus.”

“Strange choice. She seemed more the butterfly type,” Lestrade said.

“I thought it was an arrow at first. I didn’t see it up close until—“ Sherlock broke off, having no desire to further evoke an image of Amber grunting on the floor, all blood and shit and —

“No tattoo,” Lyerla confirmed. 

“So it isn’t Amber Call,” Sgt. Donovan said. “But we’re supposed to think it is? Is it possible she--?”

“No. Don’t be stupid,” Sherlock snapped. “Amber didn’t kill someone so she could disappear. She’s been forced to disappear herself.” Before anyone could ask why, words began tumbling out of him. He paced back and forth as if trying to catch up with rapidly firing neurons. “It was a strange choice wasn’t it? Why copper? Copper, copper. Copper is the metal of Venus – no, she was self-declared Christian. Girly goddess worship quite out of the question. Copper. Malleable, ductile, excellent conductor of heat and electricity, low chemical reactivity. Lovely patina. Too artsy. Amber? Amber. Eminently practical. Smart, dedicated. Reading advanced chemistry at university. Cancer research using DNA microarrays. Mother dead. Father absent. Unknown? But she knows who he is. Two passports. Father’s a British national--” He sucked in a breath. “Oh. Of course. I’m an idiot.”

“Finally,” Donovan muttered. A couple of the police constables chuckled. 

But they were officially beneath his notice now or at least off his radar. He’d caught the thread at last and ran with it. Literally. “I didn’t think she was in any immediate danger. That’s changed!” he cried, breaking into a trot. 

“Who? Amber? Why? What’s changed? Damn it Sherlock—“ 

Lestrade started jogging after him, pissed off about it. Sherlock turned and ran backwards saying, “I think your body might be Madeleine Copper’s granddaughter, Alison!” Forward again, he took off at a dead run. “I’ll meet you a Bart’s. Get Dr Hooper to do the exam—“ he shouted over his shoulder. And spared them no more thought. 

If he was right (and he _was_ ) Amber was _also_ the granddaughter of Madeleine Copper, widow of W. M. Copper of Copper-Harriman Industries. _Harriman_ not Harman. That damned accent. He hadn’t asked her for the spelling. 

Amber’s children were heirs to a fortune. Amber was never meant to know that, of course. 

An inheritance scam. Lovely. 

John’s reaction had made Sherlock unable to think properly, to see the evidence, to draw appropriate inferences and conclusions quickly. John’s emotions were distressing and hurtful and _hurt_. He’d wasted too much time trying to navigate and outmaneuver an emotional shit storm, when he could have avoided it altogether. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.


	5. Chapter 5

_John – the doctor – he’d made a mistake, in the ambulance. Everyone kept trying to get her to stop pushing, don’t push, don’t push sweetheart, but she wanted to go home and they had to come out if she was ever going home_

_Ah, well, it’s too late now, he’d said suddenly. She panicked then, the shame and terror of what she’d done crashing over her. What if she’d killed them? What if she’d murdered innocent babies? Instead of trying to get them out she was trying to hold them in. If they didn’t come out they couldn’t die from what she’d done. Jesus, Lord Jesus, sweet Lord of mercy please please please—_

_Maybe that’s why he’d put the first one on her chest, between her breasts, over her heart, its high thin cry vibrating against her skin._

_“Her lungs are clear and she’s pinked up nicely,” he said. She put her hand on the sticky little back, head, bottom, stroking up and down and over the warm flesh. Alive, thank you, God!_

_She was barely through the hospital doors when a baby boy was plopped onto her belly next to the girl, and then a whir of midwives and doctors and afterbirth. Babies removed and returned to her all wrapped in blankets with little hats on their heads. She had tubes in her arms and she felt so weak, but they tried to get her to nurse anyway---_

_She wasn’t even supposed to hold the babies! That was part of the arrangement. The dads were to be the first ones to handle their children, to cement the bonding experience. Dr Watson had told them about the tea. Surely he’d told them about the surrogacy. But he was gone now, and it was, truly, too late. She’d already kissed them on their heads._

_The fierceness of her desire to keep holding them, to touch and stroke and stare at them and kiss them constantly – it was overwhelming. Knowing this was entirely due to feel-good neurotransmitters and a flood of hormones did nothing to diminish the desire. Reason had been fighting a losing battle with hormones for months and would soon succumb completely. Already she was thinking about what she’d need to do to raise them on her own. Which was totally out of the question. Her faith in God was predicated on the idea that, having blessed her with a good mind and a healthy body, she could make informed decisions about her life without coming to Him for help all the time. She was thankful for her good mind and healthy body and told Him so daily, but she only prayed for guidance when circumstances were beyond her abilities to resolve. Like her mother’s recurring cancer. She’d prayed then and help came in the form of a gay couple who wanted her to have their children._

_Her coat was on a chair next to the bed. The babies were in their cots sleeping and she steeled herself against looking at them as she fumbled the pre-paid phone from a pocket. It was the phone the dads sent to the hotel room when she’d first arrived in London, with a note explaining they didn’t want her to accrue any charges on her own phone. How considerate that had seemed at the time. But in the past couple of weeks as she’d tried contacting them over and over, all she could think was that she was caught in a nightmare, that she was the butt of a huge cosmic joke. Her faith had been rode hard and put up wet._

_The voice mail message for the number they’d given her was the same impersonal automated one that came with every service, except it had an English accent. “I’ve had your babies,” she told it.. “I’m at University College Hospital in London. It’s about 8 PM. We may not be here tomorrow if we don’t hear from you tonight.”_

_She got back into bed and prayed in earnest, fervently, silently. Four hours later she was being wheeled into a private suite at the Portland Hospital where she sank into a comfortable bed and a dead sleep._

_At some point she heard men’s anxious voices talking about her brother coming to see her, which she thought was awfully sweet of her brother considering she didn’t have one. She couldn’t quite wake up enough to tell them that at the time. But when did, when she finally regained consciousness enough do so her first coherent thought was the certain realization she’d been drugged. She leaned over the side of the bed and vomited into a conveniently placed plastic bin, then sat up and looked around. A small bedroom in a strange house. There were no windows. There was no door handle on the inside._

 

***

The day-planner Sherlock had confiscated from Amber’s backpack and slipped into his coat pocket was the sort offered to students at universities in the US; spiral binding and the logo of the athletic department’s mascot on the cover – in this instance, a cartoon dragon named Blaze spitting flames out of its mouth. In it, Amber had recorded every meeting, appointment, and visit related to her mother’s cancer treatments, as well as her own department’s lab schedule and meetings with her thesis adviser. There were no entries to indicate she’d met with prospective parents or their lawyer or that she was undergoing hormone injections for ovulation induction in preparation for IVF. 

She may have worried the planner might be seen by her mother or a fellow student or perhaps even a member of her church. In fact, when he first glanced through it, he’d thought some of the entries were in code, which is why he’d pocketed it in the first place. But he proved to be mistaken on that account. He’d also been unable to find any sort of schedule maintained via her mobile. All of the message logs and several contact numbers had been removed permanently just days after her mother’s memorial service. He’d discovered _that_ after wasting too much time hacking into the device. Yet, she’d kept the planner. People so often committed nonsensical, unreasonable acts when grieving – and, apparently, when pregnant. 

There were other things in the planner though, those very things he’d mistaken for coded entries, and these were not connected to her sorry situation and how he might rescue her from it. There were no clues that would help him locate her. 

No. Instead, spiraling around and around within blank squares of the planner’s pages were strings of chemical notation. Complex, intriguing formulas that tormented him with their seemingly casual elegance. Other things as well, more indulgent but no less revelatory. In subscript, the poetry of neurogenesis, between girlish doodles of spirals, dots, and flowers, a few thoughts about the motility of cancer cells, an analysis of compounds found in wild honey from the Ukraine, variations of gene expression in mountain lupine. It was mind-boggling actually. This wasn’t even her serious work. 

And now, the existence of her day planner, secreted away in his bedroom, buried in a drawer under neatly folded underpants as if it were porn, was starting to trouble him more and more. It wasn’t shame he was feeling though. He didn’t really do shame. This was more … covetousness with a sprinkle of envy. 

He wondered if he’d been dragging his feet about her simply because he wanted to keep the book, maybe play with the ideas, perhaps expand upon a few and …well, possibly claim them as his own. He didn’t need John to tell him how very very _not good_ that was. The number of times the same sort of thing had happened to him at university was part of the reason he’d left. 

This must be what his professors felt when dealing with him. God, it was horrible. 

Amber Call, who had bemoaned the shrinking of her brain (with good reason), who had lied and then attempted to charm him using some sort of “southern belle” routine, who was naïve to the point of embarrassment regarding homosexuality (and likely, _all_ sexuality), who (for some unfathomable reason) put faith in a Christian god, was also a genius chemist. Her mother’s cancer had prompted her interest in the field and then her mother’s recurrent cancer had forced her to decline a scholarship and a share in a fellowship grant that would have covered much of the cost of her graduate studies. Her withdrawal from the program had made her professors weep for the loss of her talent – or so her thesis adviser had claimed in an email to him. 

At least her genius didn’t appear to extend much beyond chemistry. He took some comfort in that. 

John’s assertions that Amber hadn’t been interesting enough for him to bother with were well off the mark. Even so, it wasn’t as if Sherlock had kept the day planner merely for nefarious reasons and then pretended its author no longer existed. John asked him to look into her whereabouts and he had done so – _because_ John asked him to. He’d gone beyond the call he felt. 

He’d followed a goddamned nappy trail looking for her. 

***

John had decided to torture himself with dim sum and Soo Lin Yao. He’d usually tried not to think about Soo Lin Yao, and how he’d left her in the echoing dark, left her with an empty promise that she’d be safe, and how she was not at all safe and how she’d died terrified – in the dark. When he saw the dead woman in Amber’s red coat it was Soo Lin Yao all over again. 

It wasn’t Sherlock’s fault. It was his. He’d taken on the responsibility of Amber in the ambulance – sooner if he was honest and then he’d bailed, just as he’d bailed on Soo Lin Yao to hare off after Sherlock. Sherlock, who could bloody well take care of himself. Usually. Most of the time.

Except when he couldn’t. 

Harriet, bless her alcoholic soul, was right about one thing. John was a co-dependent enabler of the highest order -- which is why he had to stay away from his sister lest he fall into old habits. He was doing the same thing with Sherlock now. Of course the rewards were greater for him. And Sherlock didn’t get sloppy drunk, come over all weepy and then vomit on his shoes. Big plus there. 

_You’re his friend not his conscience._

He stabbed a dumpling with the narrow end of a chopstick and stuck it in his mouth. 

“That was the last one!” Sherlock slid into the seat across from him wearing a moue of disappointment. 

John did not bother to ask how Sherlock had found him. He swallowed the dumpling and, without looking him in the eyes, said, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. They’re only my favorites.”

“No, I’m sorry for what I said.”

“When?”

John glanced up searching his friend’s face for signs he was taking the piss. Nope. He apparently didn’t know or had conveniently deleted from his organic hard drive those words John had flung at him. “I shouldn’t have said that about paying you, implying that you do what you do for money. That was shit of me. So, I’m sorry.”

Sherlock shrugged and looked out the window. “Do you want to join me at Bart’s? I can prove that woman isn’t Amber. Set your mind at ease.”

“You’ve said it isn’t. I believe you.”

“But you don’t. Or you believe something about me that you didn’t believe before.” Sherlock leaned in, peering at him. He looked …uncertain.

“Right, well, here’s the thing. About _me_. When it’s someone I know—“

“It wasn’t anyone you know!”

“Let me finish. You don’t see the life _before_ the death, even when you’re looking a bloke in the eye and telling him all about himself. I know that’s you, how you are, part of how you do what you do. But. For me. Even someone I’ve only nodded to in passing, joked with maybe, or shared a pint with once, whatever. Maybe I don’t know that person well at all, but it’s not going to matter a few minutes later when I’m kneeling in the dirt trying to -- trying to hold their guts in and they’re going to die anyway or they’re pretty much dead and I’m just holding guts. So however briefly I knew them, I’ve got them, _all_ of that person in my hand now, slipping through my fingers, sliding away into death and it means something, that nod just before, that joke or swallow of beer, and you, _you_ Sherlock, you have no idea.” 

“This isn’t Afghanistan.” Sherlock said in the quiet anxious voice of a person who thought his friend was about to have a psychotic break. 

John emitted a harsh, short laugh. “You think I don’t know that? I’m saying that I can’t be like you. I’m going to feel things. I’m going to feel bad when I think I’ve screwed up and someone ends up dead.”

“John. You didn’t screw up. That woman is not dead because of anything you did. Okay?” 

“Okay.”

“Good. Great.” He leaned back in the chair again and glanced out the window. “I need a favor.” 

John’s brain cautioned him to find out the particulars first but his mouth said, “Sure.”

Sherlock struggled to get something out of his coat pocket, a fat notebook it looked like, but he shoved that back in, quick and deep with an odd guilty wince. Rooting around in the pocket some more he finally removed a slip of paper. “This is the address of Jason Le Beau, who has recently adopted twins with his partner.” John raised a brow. Sherlock acknowledged his unspoken query. “Yup. Born on the same day, they were. The infants have not been seen as yet by the neighbors but Mr. Le Beau and his also rarely seen partner have been purchasing disposable nappies by the lorry load.”

“Newborns go through a lot of nappies, Sherlock.”

“Yes. One hundred and sixty-eight nappies a week on average. Research indicates infants will use fewer as they get older, but even so, that just seems to me an inefficient system for waste management. It’s environmentally unsound, and, what’s more, _expensive._ Do you have any idea how much those things cost? Yet, the manufacturers of disposables are already positioning their products for a newly affluent Chinese market – promoting a system that hasn’t been used by the vast majority of Chinese parents in thousands of years of successful childrearing.” He gestured grandly to the wait staff and proprietors acknowledging their superior methods of managing waste in infants and bemoaning its loss to inevitable Western consumerism. “I tell you John, this planet is clearly doomed. Not even Amber Call’s future cures for cancer can save it.” He gave John a tight smile. “But we can certainly save Amber Call.” 

John crumpled his napkin onto his plate and slapped a banknote onto the table. “What would you like me to do?”

“I’d like you to determine how many of the purchased nappies have actually been used.”

“Of course you would.”

***

“Could have been a commercial kitchen walk-in,” Dr Molly Hooper suggested, “but the hypostasis just screams chest freezer. She was kind of, um, folded, like.” 

They were stood in the lab looking at the post mortem photographs on her computer. Molly took a bite of her sandwich and spoke around her chewing. “There’s no way this woman gave birth six to eight weeks ago, or even six months ago. I doubt she’s ever been pregnant. No skeletal lesions--” She pointed at an x-ray and then at one of the autopsy photos on the screen, her finger circling the area in question-- “plus, the uterus looks pristine.” 

She swallowed and took another bite. Lestrade’s expression had settled into a frozen grimace. The organs in question all had an unpleasant similarity by this point. “And which one is that now?” 

“Right there,” Sherlock said, stabbing a long finger at an image. “Small, fist-sized, scarcely any sign of decomposition.”

“Well, if she was stuffed in a chest freezer like you said—“

“The uterus stays intact for a good long while after death, Lestrade. Even if it hasn’t been previously frozen.” 

“Years sometimes,” Molly said cheerfully, “Whereas external male genitalia is practically non-existent in as little as three months.”

Sherlock heaved a sigh. “You feel the need to point that out _every single time_.” 

“Well, bears repeating. All hail the mighty uterus, engine of humanity.” 

“The prostate also stays relatively intact for months, I’ll remind you.”

“Is any of this relevant?” Lestrade asked. “I mean, other than to forensic geeks?” Sheepish expressions said no. “How’d she die then?”

“Cerebral embolism,” Molly said. “Most likely from an atrial fibrillation she didn’t know she had.” She looked at Sherlock. “We both agree, it probably wasn’t murder, just… really sad, you know.” 

“I agreed it probably wasn’t murder,” Sherlock amended in case anyone got the impression he was saddened in any way. 

“And yet, someone went to all the trouble of shoving her into a chest freezer afterwards.” 

Sherlock pulled on his lower lip as he clicked back and forth through the photos, lab results, and the written reports. “The body was put on ice very soon after death, long before rigor could set in.” 

“It certainly shows malice aforethought,” Lestrade said.

“Panic, then opportunity more like. Her sudden death derailed a plan already in motion. They had to improvise.”

“They?” 

“Bret Harriman and Jason Lebowitz. Husband and brother respectively.”

Lestrade grunted, unconvinced. He flipped through the pages of his notebook. “Well, the grandmother, Madeleine Copper died Sunday last if that means anything. Eighty-one years old. Complications from a bone marrow transplant I was told.”

“Bone-marrow transplants are supposed to be for people who have a chance at a full life afterwards,” Molly said, radiating disapproval. 

“Perhaps it was the promise of great-grandchildren to carry on the line that prompted her to purchase an agreeable oncologist,” Sherlock said. “Eighteen months ago the Harriman’s went to India for fertility treatments. Alison came back glowing with impending motherhood. But clearly she wasn’t pregnant then and never had been.”

“We still don’t know this is Alison, Sherlock,” Lestrade reminded him. Sherlock huffed in irritation. Lestrade said, “We’ll need DNA to prove it. Don’t suppose we can get that without raising suspicion. Or without a warrant.” 

“If you alert Bret Harriman to the fact that we suspect he stuck his wife’s body in a freezer you’d be putting Amber in more danger than she’s already in.”

“If she’s in so much bloody danger than why don’t you tell me where she is?”

“Because I don’t know exactly! There, are you happy?”

“Why would that make me happy? I actually want to find her alive! Jesus.”

“But you can get a warrant quickly once he knows, right?” Molly asked. 

“Depends on the evidence backing up his certainty. Anyway there’s a major kink in your theory about this being Alison Harriman. According to hospital staff, she and the babies had been visiting her grandmother two or three times a week before the old lady passed.” 

“Not in person. Never in person. The risk of infection with a bone marrow transplant would be too great. I’ll wager all the visits were conducted via Skype or a web cam that afforded no cross communication. The woman was drugged for pain. She was partially deaf and likely had trouble focusing for any length of time. Three minutes at most per visit.” Sherlock, who’d been pacing back and forth between the lab tables, stopped abruptly and stepped into the DI’s personal space. Too close as usual. “She was never talking to her granddaughter, Lestrade, even when she thought she was.” He turned abruptly and began to pace again. “Alison’s husband probably did most of the talking, held the infants up for her to see, or may even have had Amber hold them as he waved a digital camcorder around. There’s a family resemblance that would have easily have fooled Mrs. Copper in her condition.” 

“Why would there be a family resemblance?”

“Amber is Alison’s cousin. Didn’t I mention that?”

“No.”

“So you see how Amber’s children could easily pass for Alison’s. And Bret Harriman is the father in any case so if it came down to a question of DNA they’d have it covered.”

“Goes to motive. But this is still a hell of a lot of speculation –” Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, but Lestrade held up a hand. “Yeah, I know you don’t like to hear that word, but that’s what a judge will say. I need a bit more to justify search and seizure.” 

“Wouldn’t matter with the video Skyping. It isn’t saved or monitored.” 

“All right, well, here’s what I think needs doing right now. I think we ought to contact local and international databases and let them know we might have a body matching a missing person’s report. If your man thinks we believe we’ve recovered the body of Amber Call—“ 

“Brilliant! Yes. Good idea, Detective Inspector!” Sherlock exclaimed. 

Lestrade waited for the sarcastic punch-line. It didn’t come. “Really?” he said. 

“You’ve got a body recovered from the sewers and it hasn’t been picked up by the press yet. That means they’re not likely to run with it unless your lot asks them to.” 

“Should we give them the photo ID or just a sketch?”

“Description only in case any of Bret’s neighbors have caught sight of the real Amber. We wouldn’t want to force his hand.” 

“Is he likely to murder the poor girl Sherlock? Because I’m pretty keen on preventing that.”

“Never part of the original plan, I’m certain. Keep in mind he didn’t actually murder his wife. He’s trying to stick as much to the original plan as possible. Amber’s only involvement would have been to carry and give birth to twins which would then be passed off as Alison’s own little miracles. Alison’s death was terribly inconvenient. It’s why they broke off contact with Amber for so long. They were scrambling to come up with another plan. They’re trying to pass off Amber as Alison right now. But Bret Harriman’s been letting on to neighbors and shopkeepers and anyone who’ll listen, that his poor wife is suffering from post partum depression. She’s even on medication. I’m afraid that if he feels pressured in anyway, she’ll tragically succumb to suicide sooner rather than later.”

***

Amber told Bret and Jason about her brother, the one her mom had given up for adoption at fifteen, and how he’d ended up tracking her down a couple of years ago and how happy her mom had been to have him in her life again and how great it was to have a brother, because family was so awesome and wasn’t it great that Nicola and Nicolas (who she’d secretly named Piper and Henry) had each other? 

She saw from their reactions that there had indeed been a person visiting the hospital who’d claimed to be her brother. She suspected she knew who’d played that part. She hoped so anyway. She wanted the men holding her to know she wasn’t as alone as they’d assumed and that she’d be missed if anything happened to her, even if it wasn’t entirely true. 

She’d erased so much of her past when her mother died. The thought of having to explain a pregnancy she wouldn’t be able to hide any more was too much, so she’d cut off all ties, stopped answering calls and anxious emails, stopped going to labs or to church. And now she was locked in a room in a basement.

Bret and Jason assured her that as soon as a few financial situations were in order they’d pay her what they owed and send her on her way. Trying to convince themselves they wouldn’t do what they’d inevitably end up doing. 

There was no way she was leaving her kids with the likes of them. Her fake brother was a message from God, a lifeline. Her babies were hope in the face of hopelessness. So she played the game, played dumb, and waited for her chance.


	6. Chapter 6

Digging through bins in an alley in the increasingly gentrified Earl’s Court did not go unnoticed the way it might have done a few years ago. Or so John discovered when a police community support officer told him he was not permitted to do it. “Look, if you’re hungry, there’s St Barnabus Church ‘round Addison Street. Got their coffee bar on today.”

“What? Oh no, I’m not--” He looked down at himself wondering what about his current state of dress read “homeless.” He could almost hear his sister mocking him – _the fugly jumper that looks like it was plucked from the charity bin, you git._ “I’m, uh…”

The officer eyed the bags lined up just inside the narrow alley, fetid bundles spilled onto the paving. “Are those - are those _nappies,_ sir?” His voice had gone up an octave and he reached for his citation pad.

John opened his mouth and, miraculously, a lie came right out. “’Fraid so. Wife’s back to work, I’m on nappy duty 24/7, or it seems like, and damned if I don’t lose my wedding ring in…” He jerked his chin to indicate the offending items. The PCSO gave a small grunt of sympathy very close to laughter. John held up gloved hands. “Don’t suppose you’d like to help me look? Community support and all?” 

The man snorted, put the citation pad back in a pocket. “Nooo. You’re on your own with that, friend. Just make sure you don’t leave any of it lying about.” And he walked away, giving the all-clear into his radio. 

Didn’t even ask for ID! 

If only Sherlock had been there to see it. A performance worthy of a fist bump and a hearty boo yah. His imaginary version of Sherlock would totally do that. Imagining imaginary Sherlock bumping knuckles with him in appreciation put John in a remarkably great mood for someone who’d been counting dirty nappies at the behest of the real Sherlock. Which is why he didn’t notice the woman come up behind him until she said, “excuse me,” and he jumped out of his skin. 

“Ooh, sorry, love. Didn’t mean to startle you like that. It’s just, I saw you down here and I was curious. Are you the other one lives in number twelve?”

*~*~*~*

“Good morning, sir,” the annoying cheerful man said. “Is this the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bret Harriman, proud new parents of twins?” 

Bret blinked at the man standing at his front door, all white-teeth smile under a white billed cap. His shirt had short sleeves and a name tag. A pair of Clark Kent glasses and a clipboard completed the picture of either a satellite TV subscription salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness. 

“Well, that would depend upon who wants to know, and what that person is selling.”

“Ted Potter,” the guy said, pointing at the tag above the breast pocket. “I’m with Cottontails Nappy Laundering Service. Couldn’t help but notice you aren’t using us.” His smile got even wider, if that was possible, and he aimed a thumb at the bin with flies buzzing around it. 

“Oh, right. I think I got something online from you guys. We looked into it, but …”

“I’ll bet you thought it too costly, right? What most new parents don’t realize is that they’re paying the same amount for brand name disposables as they could be for soft, luxuriant pure cotton nappies delivered to their door weekly.”

“Really?” 

“And you could be paying even less. Did you know your council offers a subsidy for using a nappy service? That’s a savings, Mr. Harriman – you are Mr Harriman? – super! a savings of five quid a week over the cost of name brand disposables. Two hundred and eighty pounds a year on average! Plus, much better for the environment, right? What are we saving the planet for if not for our kids?” He handed Bret some coupons for discounts on baby products, and a couple of brochures about the service. “We also provide specially treated deodorizing bins and biodegradable bin liners. You just put the soiled ones out for pick up and get fresh ones in return. Neat and easy.”

“Thanks. Sounds great. I’ll talk to the missus.”

“We’re offering a special introductory offer if you sign up today. First week free.”

Bret looked up quickly from the brochure. “Even for twins?” 

“Oh. Oh right. Well, the offer is for the usual _one_ , you understand - but you’d still be getting half a week’s worth of two happy little bottoms and that’s better than no happy little bottoms, wouldn’t you agree? 100% pure cotton. No chemicals or gels—”

“Like I said, need to parlay with the wife -“

“Or maybe I could speak with her? Didn’t take long to convince my wife once she heard how eco-friendly and cost effective a nappy service could be.”

Bret wondered why Ted would have to convince his wife since employees probably got a discount anyway. “She’s resting,” he said, adding a bit of gravity to his tone. “Not feeling like herself these days.”

“Imagine she’s knackered most of the time, eh? Goes with the territory. And double the joy too. Blimey! Twins! My wife was a wreck for weeks after, and we only had the one. Can’t imagine what she’d’ve been like with two of them.” Ted’s gaze looked momentarily far away, into a fond memory presumably, and he chuckled, “I remember this one time her saying as how she’d happily murder someone for three hours uninterrupted sleep. She was looking _right_ at me. Terrifying.” 

“Postpartum depression is nothing to joke about. It’s very serious. Some women experience suicide ideation.”

“Oh, no sir, she wasn’t _that_ gone. Just exhausted, you know. All those hormones, and the feedings at all hours –“ Ted drew in a breath, eyes wide on Bret in sudden realization. “ _Oh._ Oh, you meant— Yeah, that’s-that’s nothing to joke about, you’re quite right there.” Bret almost laughed, watching the struggle between Ted’s social discomfort and his desperate scramble to save a potential sales commission. “Uh, but, you know, most of ‘em get past it. Really. Tell you what helped mine, shall I? Fresh air. Sunshine.” There was something in the way he looked at Bret in that moment. Such focused, unwavering attention, smile as cool as ice cream. 

A tiny alarm in his head went _beep._ He looked past Ted, past the bins at the kerb, looking for a delivery van or an unfamiliar car. Didn’t see either. Still…

“Tell you what, Ted. How about you take care of your wife and I’ll take care of mine? That work for you?” 

“Right, sorry, sorry, of course, no offence intended.” 

“None taken.” Bret gave the man a tight smile of his own, crumpling the brochure in his fist. “Thanks for the info,” he said, and moved to close the door. 

“It’s just, you know, nothing cures the baby blues like freshly laundered nappies delivered weekly to your—“

And then he shut it in Ted’s face. 

***

Sherlock walked around the corner briskly and kept walking until he was sure he was out of sight before pulling off the cap. He scrubbed his fingers through his hair to get the feeling of it off his scalp. 

He didn’t like wearing hats. Even as an infant, when there was little choice in the matter of what he wore, he’d made it very clear, very loudly that he didn’t want a hat on his head – at least, so his mother claimed (with a certain amount of fondness), and corroborated by his brother (with considerably less). As a small child he harbored the belief that wearing a hat kept his thoughts trapped in his head. As an adult, he knew many people who’d be glad for him to wear a hat if it actually kept some of his thoughts from getting out. But really, the aversion to hats stemmed from the same distracting irritation he experienced with clothing tags and certain fabrics: For example, Ted’s poly/cotton blend with the scratchy maker’s tag at the back of his neck. 

He headed towards Stafford Road and the one-hour dry cleaners where he’d left his trousers, shirt and jacket to be cleaned while he went door to door dressed as Ted Potter. He considered how best to handle Bret Harriman. 

The nappies in Harriman’s bin had been all rolled up and taped as if soiled, but none of them were. And the amounts in the bin had been constant without variation. The man was rolling and taping up one hundred and sixty eight tiny unused Huggies per week. Sherlock imagined him in front of the telly with a glass of chardonnay, rolling and taping up the day’s allotment. For this reason alone, he decided, Bret Harriman needed to go to prison. As a ruse to fool neighbors it wasn’t particularly inspired, despite his having gone to the trouble of dumping food waste in on top. Of course, once the bags were at a landfill who would notice or care? 

But Bret wouldn’t be able to keep up the ruse much longer as the weather improved. Even neighbors who’d been given the lie about postpartum depression (a lie Bret had intimated to a complete stranger at his front door just minutes ago) were bound to wonder why they never saw Mrs. Harriman or her infants. There was a twin stroller - the tandem kind not the double buggy side by side - neatly folded and propped against the stairs in the entry. It had clearly never been opened out into its strolling utility. And there were none of the usual signs of chaos that infants brought with them. Things new parents didn’t – _couldn’t_ – anticipate. He’d been in homes where children lived and there was always some indication of their messy occupancy even in the tidiest of them. Harriman’s house was neat as a pin, inside and out, with all the necessary accoutrements for the children of modern parents kept pristine and waiting. Bret intended that his children would drop into their picture-perfect home in picture-perfect Wallington (with its top rated primary schools and sunny little playgrounds) as if carried there by a stork, as far removed from chest freezers and the murder of their mother as they could possibly be. 

The stork had not yet arrived though. Their mother was still alive somewhere, although not for long, Sherlock believed. Bret had used the phrase “suicide ideation,” a clinical term, plucked straight from a psychiatric website on postpartum depression, no doubt. 

Sherlock knew from experience that one could grow a lie into an approximation so close to the truth that it might as well _be_ the truth. He knew that Bret was telling his lie often, not just to others but to himself as well. With continual reinforcement, it would eventually be felt as a heartbreaking truth. And all would follow his lead -- _oh, poor Mr. Harriman, left a widower to raise those children on his own. Let us dandle his babies and bring him casseroles and soups and pasta salads and puddings_. 

The house in Wallington was one of the several possible places Sherlock had determined Amber might be, based on several factors, not merely the trail of nappies that led to Bret Harriman’s door. But that had been early on, before the body was found in the sewer. The connection of Amber Call to the Copper’s granddaughter Alison made it possible for him to narrow the field considerably. Since Alison’s husband Bret also happened to be great-nephew (one of many) to Arthur Harriman, CEO of Copper-Harriman Industries, a huge tangle of shareholdings and inheritance rights and stipulations in wills came into play. After that, he’d easily narrowed the game of “Where’s Amber?” down to three, then two. An address in central London and Bret Harriman’s recently purchased home in Wallington, Surrey. 

As he crossed to the drycleaners he rang John. “She’s not here.”

“Well then,” John replied, “you’ll be interested to know that Jason La Beau and his mysterious partner have a live-in nanny. A neighbor saw her about three weeks ago, very late at night, getting out of Jason’s silver Audi SUV – what the hell does anyone living in central London need with an SUV anyway? Cost a fortune to park it and Christ, where would you even—”

“It’s Bret Harriman’s. Get on with the story.”

“The neighbor witnessed Jason escort the nanny into the house first _then_ come back for the babies about ten minutes later.” 

“Irresponsible _and_ suspicious.”

“Gossip has it the nanny doesn’t speak a word English, and that she drinks or uses drugs, or that she might actually be some sort of Russian sex slave. I don’t know how gossip reconciles that with the gay couple that supposedly owns the flat but—“

“It’s not a townhouse?” He had a mental map of the area but hadn’t bothered to look at satellite images of the address. If he’d made an erroneous assumption—

“More like terraced with delusions of being semi-detached. End of the street, only shares one wall. Recently renovated. Neighbor says the previous owners expanded into the cellar, wanted to make a media room or something down there but they never finished. There’s a look-out window cut but not framed. Boarded up or covered over from the inside.”

“My goodness, John, that’s a wealth of information you got out of counting used nappies.”

“You want to know how many there were?”

“Not any more.”

He heard the lift of shoulders and the short huff of a sigh. “I fucking hate you right now.”

Sherlock laughed and thumbed “exit.” The declaration of hatred combined with swearing meant things were nearly back to normal, and he preferred to leave it on that note. He handed the Turkish woman behind the counter his claim slip and phoned Lestrade. 

“I strongly suggest you pick up Jason Le Beau aka Jason Lebowitz for questioning regarding the suspicious death of Amber Call. I’ll text his address as soon as I ring off.” He tucked his mobile between chin and shoulder as the woman passed the hangers across to him. “Yes, yes, _Amber_ … well, if you’d put your brain to work for a moment I’m sure you’ll – ah, got it now? Terrific.” He slid an extra tenner across to her and gestured to the back room where he’d changed out of the clothes earlier. She lifted the hinged counter and let him through. He could hardly wait to be out of Ted’s uniform and onto the north platform out of sodding Surrey. 

“As soon as Jason opens his mouth,” he told Lestrade, “I guarantee you’ll have a search warrant in hand by morning. Let him stew until I get there though.” 

He didn’t mention it would take him two or three hours to get there depending on trains and traffic. 

***

After swearing quietly into his mobile for a few moments, John dropped it into his pocket and began to shove the overstuffed plastic bags back into the bins. He pulled off the gloves, threw them in after and realized he had no idea what was expected of him next. 

He felt certain Amber was in the house, likely in the basement, likely being kept compliant through a combination of drugs, isolation, and maternal anxiety. He walked around to the front of the house again and saw Chatty Neighbor looking out her window at him, now with a great deal more suspicion. He waved cheerily. The curtain dropped back over the window. Seemed like a good time to start walking. There was a tavern on Earls Court Road, imaginatively named Earls Court Tavern and he headed off in that direction. 

It was mad luck that he spotted the silver grey Audi SUV pulling into an impossibly narrow lock-up garage on the next street over by one. 

***

She heard the two men moving upstairs, muffled sounds of conversation above her head. She assumed that meant they’d all be going to the other house for the video chat with Jason’s granny. 

Amber didn’t look forward to visits with the granny as these involved drugs in a glass of orange juice or diet Pepsi. One of the date-rape drugs, ketamine most likely. What little she knew of the effects of club drugs (aside from their chemical properties and their effects on the brain), was limited to the warnings from friends about not leaving drinks unattended, which had never been a concern really since she didn’t party much. Or at all really. 

It was patently unfair that a good Christian girl like herself had ended up pregnant and drugged (in that order) without having partied even a little. Jason and Bret weren’t much for parties. Or rape. At least they hadn’t done that. So far. 

The visit with the granny was overdue by Amber’s reckoning, although time had started to lose a lot of meaning for her. Down here, only the constancy of the babies’ needs for nourishment, clean bottoms, sleep, cuddles and stimulation kept her anchored to any sort of concept of time passing. The incremental changes in their growth and development were the only evidence of change. When the babies slept she escaped into dreams. Or if sleep wouldn’t come (and after the visits with granny it often wouldn’t) she played games of mental agility or practiced tricks of recall. The periodic table was good for that, naming and listing properties, trying and failing not to cry when specifics danced out of the range of her memory. 

Running under everything, like the little can-do engine of her sanity, was a prayer dialog with the Lord on a continual loop. Sometimes the Lord answered in the voice of her mother, sometimes He sounded like her adviser Dr Mitchell. Once she’d awakened serene in the knowledge that she was safe, that everything was going to be fine, all because the voice of Sherlock Holmes had said, “Hold fast, little sister, I’m on my way,” words she was sure he’d never say in waking life, especially since he said them like a native Alabaman. 

Something was off about the tone of the voices above her head even without being able to hear the words. She’d jolted awake to the babies fussing with a churning dread in her gut. Or maybe that was just the hunger talking. 

Jason’s increasing apathy towards her presaged a coming change in her status. Until recently he’d been the kind one. Even now, he made sure the babies had clean clothes and plenty of diapers, and that they were fed -- Amber had formula and distilled water and a bottle sterilizer for them in the room – but he hadn’t brought _her_ an actual meal in a while. He hadn’t brought her upstairs to use the bath for a while either. He’d only done that, she realized, when they were going to video chat with his grandmother. She remembered very little about the actual chats in the room in the other house except for beautiful curtains and a rocking chair, but she did remember the luxury of the bath that went before. 

She’d been bathing the babies and cleaning herself in the tiny sink in the en suite toilet. She really, really didn’t want to die with stringy hair, and zits on her chest, dressed in ratty old pajamas, and reeking of baby spit-up. Everyone was beautiful in the eyes of the Lord, of course, but—

But. 

_Jesus, I cannot leave my babies with these men_. 

Thick, hot tears clogged her throat, threatening to choke her. The tenor of the conversation upstairs peaked suddenly. The front door opened and closed. A few minutes later Bret Harriman unlocked the door to her prison. He’d brought her a glass of orange juice. 

***

Jason pulled his jacket tighter around him as he walked to the pub, _a_ pub, _any_ pub would do. Bret had told him to leave the house and stay gone until last call. 

Looked like a well-deserved night out if he squinted hard. After all, he’d been doing most of the work. Laundry and washing up and taking out the rubbish. He was due a respite. Except he’d never been much of a drinker. Mostly went to bars for karaoke and chatting up. Couldn’t do that here. Not now. Couldn’t even call Ali—

_Don’t think._

Right, yes. A pub. Pretend to watch a match or something. Men in shorts running back and forth. What’s not to love? Or he could see a film. A film would be better distraction. Then the pub. Then food maybe. Something light so it wouldn’t come back up later—

 _Don’t. Fucking. Think_. 

“Mr. Le Beau?” It took him a second. Oh yeah, _him._ Shit. Shit shit shit. Who could be looking for -- “Jason Le Beau?”

He turned a pleasantly confused face to the speaker. Looked into the eyes of a lovely brown-skinned woman with fabulous hair. “Yes?” 

She held up a badge. “Sgt Donovan. We have a few questions we’d like to ask you, if you wouldn’t mind coming down to the station.”

It was not framed as a request, and he was pretty sure she didn’t give a fuck whether he minded or not.


	7. Chapter 7

The driver of the SUV was a tall man, good-looking (or certainly thought of himself as such), with close-cropped light brown hair and dressed in what Sherlock called “expensive casual.” Clearly preoccupied and yet awfully twitchy, the man darted quick nervous glances at parked cars and news stands and the faces of uni kids with backpacks as he moved purposefully towards his destination. 

John followed from a discreet distance, pretending to be deeply engrossed in whatever was on the screen of his smartphone. He even tried to text Sherlock but quickly discovered he couldn’t text and walk at the same time – not without running into lampposts anyway. Still, he didn’t have to follow for long. The driver of the SUV entered the very house wherein John suspected a Russian sex slave, a drunken nanny, or Amber Call was being held captive. 

He ducked behind the skip in the hotel alley across the way (once a popular youth hostel and now being converted to tiny expensive flats), and sent Sherlock a proper text apprising him of the situation. He didn’t count on a response. Sherlock, for all that he claimed to prefer texts, was no more liable to answer those than he was to get on the line and say hello. Just as John was giving text a try one more time the front door of number twelve opened and another man came out. This one was about John’s height, with dark hair, trendy specs and a leather coat. Scarf flung over his shoulder, hands tucked in his coat pockets; the man looked about for a moment before strolled jauntily off in the direction of Warwick Street. A few seconds later a car pulled away from a kerb. 

Once upon a time John would not have recognized that the car was, in fact, following the man, and that it was likely an unmarked surveillance car. Once upon a time he would not have been around the sort of people who might be followed by an unmarked surveillance car. He noted with amusement that the SUV driver had completely missed it.

John pocketed his mobile. Clearly Sherlock and D.I. Lestrade had the situation well in hand. 

***

Sherlock made the cabbie wait while he ran upstairs to fetch the charger for his mobile. 

It had taken less time than he’d anticipated getting back to London, but the cab ride seemed interminable and by the time he arrived at Scotland Yard Jason Lebowitz had been stewing in his own juices for nearly two hours. Lestrade had been calling and texting him for at least one of those hours and looked decidedly pissed off. Sherlock merely held up his Blackberry and the cord for the charger. Lestrade grunted irritably and pointed at an outlet. Through the two-way mirror they could see Jason fidgeting at the table by himself. He’d pulled out his mobile once or twice but thought better of it each time. 

“Three cups of tea, no toilet breaks,” Lestrade told Sherlock. He nodded at Donovan. “Sergeant here’s been warming him up.” 

Donovan flicked a glance at Sherlock. “He’s admitted to using an alias. But he’s an actor. They do that.” 

“What else?”

“Oh, all kinds of fascinating things. His maternal grandparents were anti-Semitic arseholes which has something to do with the name change. His mother is on one of those Eat Pray Love junkets flitting about the globe trying to find herself through sexual encounters with younger men – _his_ words not mine. He played Silurian Number Four on an episode of Doctor Who—“ Sherlock made a gruff sound of impatience. Donovan smirked then said, “He wants to know why he’s here, obviously. He’s getting antsy, ready to assert his rights.”

“Hello?” Jason called from inside the room as if on cue. They all turned to look at him through the two-way. “This is getting ridiculous,” he grumped. “What’s this all about anyway? I’d like to get out of here. Hello? Seriously. I really need to piss.” 

Lestrade gestured to a PC who trotted over. “Escort him to the toilets and bring him right back here.” 

Sherlock glanced over at Lestrade’s notes and all the information he himself had found and given to him. “The lawyer in the states. Megan Forsmark. Lead with that.” 

 

***

Amber had distracted Bret with the babies at first. Ten minutes of chatter about all the amazing things they were doing now. Which admittedly wasn’t much at eight weeks, but he seemed genuinely distressed by how much they’d changed since he’d seen them last. She took the opportunity of both his distraction and distress to make a dash for the open door. 

She didn’t get far and it was clear he wasn’t going to buy her backwoods country girl act again. He dragged her up the basement steps into the living room, tied her to a dining chair, and poured the juice down her throat, roughly mopping the remains off her face and pyjama top afterwards like she was a naughty child. 

He was in the kitchen now, lacing baby bottles with brandy. When she’d seen what he’d meant to do with the brandy, she totally freaked out, begged him, threatened him, struggled against the nylon rope until it cut into her arms and breasts. He’d got right up in her face and screamed, “They’re _my_ children! Mine! You’ve got nothing to do with how they’ll be raised.” 

Tears burst out of her eyes and she started to sob and couldn’t seem to stop. He’d pulled back from her then, straightening up, smoothing his shirt down and his hair back. Tried to assure her this was just something the British did differently which she knew was bullshit. “My mother gave me a bit of brandy in milk when I was teething,” he insisted, “and I turned out all right.” 

The irony in the statement was lost on neither of them. He’d left the room in a hurry. 

Down in the basement, she could hear the babies’ cries changing from displeasure to outrage to anguish. They were only hungry, but the sounds of their need pierced her heart, made her frantic with her own helplessness. It was hard not to struggle even though that would make the drug work all the quicker. Her upper torso and upper arms were bound by the nylon rope wrapped round and round the back of the chair. She could move her forearms a bit, and her hands were free, and she could kick. A good kick in the crotch if she aimed just right. Then what?

Ligature marks, rope fibres – all of that would be easily detectable with a post mortem even if the drugs were not. _Her_ post mortem, she reminded herself. Yeah, yeah, she’d be with Jesus, but Jason’s and Bret’s stupidity would be of little comfort to her in the after life. They’d go to prison. Piper and Henry - _her children_ \- would go into foster care. It could take years for all the legal issues to be settled before they could be put up for adoption, and even if they were, they probably wouldn’t end up together. 

This was all presupposing her body was ever found, of course. 

The drapes were drawn, the living room lit by a single lamp. Bret’s jacket was on the sofa. She might be able to reach it with her foot and drag it over. He usually kept his cell phone in one of the pockets. She figured she had fifteen minutes at most before the drug rendered any wilful action impossible.

A door creaked and she heard Bret’s footsteps descending to the basement. She hoped to God he wasn’t going to just prop the bottles into their mouths. They were still tiny, they could choke or get too much air in their tummies or smother when the pillows he used to prop the bottles somehow managed to cover their tiny noses and mouths –

 _All right, okay, calm down Amber, focus_. The other very important reason she hoped he didn’t prop the bottles was because he’d be back upstairs that much sooner. 

She stretched out a leg, got her foot under the jacket and lifted it off the sofa, dragging it until she could raise her foot high enough for her fingers to grasp the fabric and tug it onto her lap. The phone was a heavy solid weight on the top of her thigh and she carefully manoeuvred it out of the inside pocket. 

She’d already decided on a text message, one that she hoped Bret would not link to her if he should check his message log. She had one phone number fixed in her head, the only phone number belonging to anyone in England that she knew by heart, and only because she’d texted it a gazillion times a few weeks ago in a hyper-hormonal frenzy. 

She composed the text, pressed “send” then pushed the phone into a pocket, hooked the jacket over her foot again and flung it back onto the sofa. Keys and coins rattled noisily as it landed – not in the same place. 

Mere seconds passed before she regretted the message. Stupid long shot. Why, why, why did she choose that? She should have called 911 or whatever it was here, oh God, why couldn’t she remember what it was? Jesus! She stretched out her leg again. At the hotel? Didn’t they have emergency numbers posted by the phone? 999? Maybe? She had no idea where she was, but they could probably reverse the call. Triangulate and figure out where she was. Couldn’t they do that here? 

She heard Bret coming back upstairs. He’d propped the damned bottles, the bastard! 

She felt her chin sink into her chest, her head so heavy. Even her tears came out slow. She’d blown her chance. The message she’d sent was too obscure. It relied on too many variables, the assumption of shared knowledge, unsubstantiated actions, blind faith –

 _Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen._

Hebrews 11:1. Yeah. Great. Swell. Thanks for that, Heavenly Father. 

She sucked in a breath and pushed it out in a shaky exhalation. 

_Fine, I’ll give faith another shot. Nothing I can do about it now anyway_. 

When Bret returned he didn’t seem to notice the altered position of his jacket. In fact, he pushed it away absently so he could sit on the couch opposite her. He took a swallow from the brandy decanter in his hand, grimaced, then looped the toe of his boot under the rungs of her chair and jerked it around, scraping it across the hardwood floor so they were now face to face. 

Her ears buzzed, her vision blurred. Terror receded like the tide – still present, just farther away drifting aimlessly under the water. 

He looked at her and she forced herself to look back, to look at him for as long as she could so he’d know that she’d remember him even into death. That she would haunt him.

“You remind me so much of Alison,” he said suddenly. 

_Alison?_

And then he started to cry. 

*** 

“So what’s this all about then?”

“As we’ve said already Mr Le Beau,” Sgt Donovan began, “we’re investigating the suspicious death of an American woman named Amber Call. Her body was recovered from the sewers a few days ago.” 

One didn’t have to be trained in psychology or interrogation procedures to note Jason’s reaction. 

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Well, see, the thing is, a lawyer with a firm in America, specifically in the state of Alabama, she claims she was retained by you to broker an arrangement with Amber Call to be a surrogate for the children of you and your partner, Bret Harriman.”

Jason swallowed loudly. “He’s not—he’s not—“

“He’s not your partner is he?”

“No.”

“He’s your brother-in-law, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why you chose to represent yourselves to Megan Forsmark as domestic partners?”

“Er, should I- should I be asking for a solicitor ?”

“You haven’t been accused of a crime, Jason. Unless … do you have something to get off your chest? Do you wish to confess to the murder of Amber Call?”

“She isn’t dead!”

Lestrade punched the air. Sherlock murmured, “I told you he’d fold in no time.”

“We recovered her body,” Donovan was saying. “We’re just waiting for dental records to confirm it.”

“Oh God, oh God. Yeah, um, it’s not her, the one you found, it’s not Amber.”

“I see. Do you know who it is then?”

Jason laid his head onto his folded arms on the table, and nodded. 

They’d have a search warrant in under an hour at this rate. Sherlock’s Blackberry was still charging so he checked messages without unplugging it, scrolling past all those from Lestrade. There were two from John and one from a number he didn’t recognize. He almost deleted that one automatically. A glance told him it was probably a wrong number, full of the text-speak he loathed. _Spell the damned words._. But a closer glance brought a surge of glee— “LEAVING SOON!!!” the message read, “C13H16CINO HOPE 2CUB4IGO BRO.” 

Then he cursed, a lot, a long string of curses that actually managed to shock hardened veterans of the Metropolitan Police Service. Before anyone could ask what was up, he tore open the door to the interrogation room, slapped his hands on the table (with his Blackberry still in one of them), and leaned across into the startled, terrified face of Jason Lebowitz. 

“She’s there right now you little shit! Did you think being here would provide you an alibi for actual murder?”

“What the hell, Freak?” Donovan said.

Sherlock straightened abruptly and whirled around, waving the device in his hand. “Amber sent me a message over an hour ago. They’re going to kill her tonight. She’s been dosed with ketamine. You need to send a car to his house now. Right now.” They stared at him, mouths open. “NOW.” He didn’t wait to see if they moved, but sped from the room and out of the building and ran until his shouts for a taxi finally got him one. 

***

Amber could still feel things, but everything she felt was heavy and soft and hovering somewhere above or beside her – the light, the dark, hunger, her fingers, the rope, Bret’s face snuffling at her breasts, the puff of moist warm breath against her bare skin, his hot tears as he cried for Alison. His wife. Who was dead. Not the sister who died in a car accident that Amber resembled. No. His wife. He was pretending _she_ was Alison now. Making her _be_ his wife. His hand rubbing between her legs told her that. It didn’t feel terrible. Nothing felt as terrible as it should. Her conscious mind was already disconnecting and that was okay because she needed it to go look in on the babies. With a little tug she felt her consciousness pull away altogether. It went to the kitchen first and looked through the cupboards, and looked in the fridge. Looking for something to eat, probably. Then it went to the basement. 

***  
A call from Sherlock had John rushing from the tavern and yet another plate of food he’d paid for but not got to eat. Back just in time to see a cab pull up to the kerb and Sherlock leap out. John raced after him not bothering to ask what was going on. 

Despite his air of terrible urgency and the sound of sirens getting ever louder and closer, Sherlock Holmes took a moment to compose himself, standing there at the front door to Number Twelve. He took a measured breath and blew it out slowly, then knocked on the door and, in a voice not his own, shouted “Oi Bret! Open up, I forgot my key.” 

Long breathless seconds passed and then the door cracked open a sliver. Sherlock rammed his shoulder against it, and was inside in a blink. John stepped in behind him and immediately saw the tall man, Bret Harriman presumably, scuttling backwards on the floor of the entry with Sherlock looming over him. 

“Stay where you are, Mr Harriman,” the detective said coolly. “The police will be with you shortly.” And indeed, Lestrade entered moments later with two PCs. John was already in the front room by then. Sherlock knew from the tenor of his vocal outrage that he’d found Amber. 

“Jesus,” John muttered, trying to untie the ropes. “That bastard, that bastard.” 

Amber, tied to a chair, head lolling to the side, her pyjama bottoms around her ankles. 

She wasn’t dead.

“We’ll need to cut the ropes, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock called over his shoulder as he went to the kitchen. He ignored the second chorus of outrage, squelched his own trepidation and ducked his head as he went down the steps to the basement. 

Though much of the refurbishment had not been completed, the bedroom was done, carpeted in dark blue wool, walls painted bright white. There was a bed, a microwave oven, bottles, nappies, piles of baby clothes, Amber’s own clothes spilling out of her ugly yellow plaid cases on the floor – and one cot containing two babies, both sleeping deeply. Perhaps too deeply, he thought, as he peered in. Someone had attempted to feed them with bottles propped on rolled up towels. The bottles were mostly drained, some of the liquid spilled into the towels and the bedding and onto the babies themselves. But they’d drunk their fill it seemed … or they’d drunk enough to keep them quiet. He leaned in sniffing. Picked up a bottle and shook a few drops onto his hand, sniffing again then tasting –

Or they were drunk. He gave one of the infants a gentle prod. Nothing. He grasped a little arm and wriggled it a bit. Still nothing. 

Lestrade appeared at the door just as Sherlock was lifting one out of the cot. Its face contorted and a snorting snuffling sound came out of its mouth. Sherlock let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. 

“Thank God,” Lestrade sighed. “Ambulance is on the way.” He leaned in and picked up the other baby, cradling it in one arm like a pro. “You need to support the head a bit more,” he told Sherlock, demonstrating. He had three of his own at home so he should know. In a rare show of humility, Sherlock conceded to his expertise. 

Later, as Amber and her infants were being loaded into the ambulance she saw him and called out. He was surprised she was capable of that much. “There’s my pretend brother,” she said, making a grab for his hand. “You got my message.” Her words were a bit slurred, and she had trouble focusing but otherwise the effects of the drug seemed to be wearing off. 

“I did. Very clever.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t remember 999.”

He laughed. “But you could remember my number and the chemical formula for ketamine.”

“You know how it is,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut. 

“I do. Yes.” He squeezed her hand then placed it on the stretcher. “I do.” 

***

He tried to sneak out the back way but Mrs Hudson caught him. 

“Oh good, there you are. The poor girl had a time trying to get the buggy up those stairs, so I invited them in here. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss them, Sherlock. They’ve got so big.” 

“Have they?” he said, feigning interest badly. 

Mrs Hudson took him at his word not his tone. “Yes. They’re plump and sassy. Come on, come on, they’re only babies and they’ve got more patience than you already.” She latched onto his upper arm in a grip somewhere between a vice and a viper, and dragged him into her sitting room. John was already in the comfortable chair. Amber sat on the sofa lost in a sea of hideous cabbage rose upholstery. She looked happy and healthy, with her pony-tailed hair, rosy cheeks and sensible trainers on her feet. One baby sat upon her lap – the girl one judging by the bow glued to its mostly bald head -- and the boy one (wearing miniscule Levis and a tiny plaid shirt) still in his seat in the buggy, sucking noisily on a dummy. 

A dummy!

“Dear God. Why have you started them on those?” Sherlock waved his pointing finger at the offending rubber thing in the boy baby’s mouth. 

Amber’s big grin at seeing Sherlock drooped a little, but she offered a demonstration of her reasoning simply enough. She reached into the buggy and pulled the plug out of the baby’s mouth. Startled by the effrontery of her action, then properly outraged, the baby scrunched up his eyes and opened his mouth and began to wail. Amber looked at Sherlock. His expression of contrition was all the confirmation she needed. She reinserted the dummy into the angry mouth of her son and said, “You’re a grumpy baby today aren’t you, Henry? Just like uncle Sherlock.”

The more Sherlock insisted Amber not refer to him in any sort of familial way, the more she did it, almost on purpose, just to annoy him. He carefully ignored her. He noticed John trying not to laugh and ignored him as well. 

“Look, baby girl,” Amber said close to her daughter’s ear, “That’s the man that brought you into this world.” 

John wiggled his fingers “hi” at the baby. “Sherlock mentioned something about you doing your graduate work at Cambridge come spring?” 

“It’s ranked super high for its chemistry department. And I don’t even have to worry about the money it costs. The families are taking care of everything. They’re even buying me a little house. And I have a nanny.” Even the word made her giddy. She said it again, “A freaking _nanny_!” She jostled the baby on her knee sing-song-ing “nanny” over and over again. 

“What brings you into London then? Other then the pleasure of our company?”

Amber tensed slightly, the baby on her lap spit up and she fussed for a moment, wiping and adjusting bows. 

“It’s a hearing, John,” Sherlock explained quietly. “To set the court dates for a criminal trial.”

“Oh. Oh, but you didn’t need be here for that, surely?”

“The lawyers said I didn’t, but Jason’s going to cop a plea or plea down or whatever y’all call it here, and I don’t want Bret to pull that nonsense.” 

“Too right,” Mrs. Hudson declared. Her brow furrowed. “I still don’t understand how it was all supposed to work. The papers made it sound like you and that Alison could’ve been twins, but nowadays they’ve got DNA tests and the like. They would have been found out even if you were the spitting image of Alison Harriman.”

“Only because Amber came to me,” Sherlock said. “If they’d have stayed in contact with her, kept her from panicking like she did, they might never have been caught, especially if it were based on identification of the bodies. DNA testing is quite costly, and isn’t done under most circumstances. Usually positive ID by family members suffices. Alison’s body had Amber’s personal identification on it. And Amber here would have been identified by Bret and Jason. They were the only ones available at the time. Jason and Alison’s father was in treatment for pancreatic cancer in Geneva, and their mother was in Brazil—” 

Amber pursed her lips and made a sound of disapproval. “She’s horrible. I know she’s had a terrible loss and it’s not very Christian of me to think that, but she’s been a total bitch to me. She acts like I’m the one who tried to con the family.”

Sherlock chuckled. “If you look at it from her perspective though, maybe you can understand her frustration. Nicola Copper marries a Jewish man for love and as a result is basically cut out of her parents’ will. Her children are provided with trust funds but that’s it. Her twin brother, on the other hand, runs off to America to become a rockabilly guitarist, marries a girl so that he can stay in that country, gets her pregnant, abandons her, and yet he is set to inherit everything – oh. That reminds me. Here.” He withdrew an envelope from the pocket of his coat and handed it to her. “From the office of the medical examiner in Los Angeles.” 

Amber took the envelope looked at it for a moment. “So he’s definitely dead. My father.”

“Yes. That’s why Megan Forsmark’s firm was originally retained. To determine the status of Nicolas Copper and inform him that he - and his direct descendents, of course - were the beneficiaries of your grandfather’s holdings in the company. If Nicolas was dead and also had no children, then it all went to the children of Jason and Alison.”

“Oh.”

“Right. You knew nothing about your father or his family. You looked enough like Alison that the resultant offspring would pass muster. Until Alison died unexpectedly – over a game of Scrabble at a cottage in the Lake District apparently – it probably would have worked to the benefit of all concerned.”

“Sherlock, really!” Mrs Hudson said.

“How do you reckon?” John echoed, equally shocked.

“What?” Sherlock said looking at them like they were mad. “Amber would have ended with a substantial sum, gone back to University, and these children would still be well cared for. More than well cared for.”

“Bret put his wife in a chest freezer,” Amber pointed out.

“To be fair she was already dead.”

“Okay, Sherlock,” John said clapping his hands together. “You’re done talking now. Look. Amber brought cookies she made herself, and Mrs. Hudson has tea.” 

Later, full of Snickerdoodles and black tea, John, Amber, and Mrs Hudson exclaimed over the adorable doings of babies that couldn’t do much of anything but reach for objects they shouldn’t have and try to put those objects into their mouths. Sherlock did his best impersonation of disinterested teenager engrossed in a game of Angry Birds. But after twenty minutes he couldn’t take it anymore.

“When are you supposed to get your brain back again?”

“Shut up. They’re adorable and you know it. I mean, look at them. Plus they’re smart as whips. My genes are definitely the dominate ones.” 

“No argument there,” Sherlock said with a snort of laughter. 

“If you ever decide you wanna have kids I’m totally your go-to gal.”

Silence fell upon the room. 

“Oh come on! Why’re y’all all so serious over here?”

Sherlock looked up from his Blackberry. “Well, you did just offer to bear my children. It’s a weirdly incestuous offer.”

“Good grief! We wouldn’t have actual sex! Just good old fashion medical procedures.”

“Technically, I believe I’d still have to have sex with myself and frankly, I’m just not attracted to me in that way.”

“Please,” John said, rolling his eyes. “You love yourself in _every_ way.” 

“Is this about the long showers again? Because I’ve explained it has to do with mild OCD.”

“Which you exhibit under no other circumstances—“ 

“I can cite plenty of examples of situation specific OCD.”

“Yeah, pull the other one why don’t you.”

Sherlock looked shifty-eyed. 

“You hear that, children? Momma’s fake brother doesn’t want to be her baby-daddy.”

Mrs. Hudson shook her head, and rose to clear the tea things. 

“Besides” Sherlock went on, “I’m sure any fruit of my loins could only be a harbinger of the coming apocalypse.”

“You’re not _that_ evil. Anyway, I’d raise them. So they’d be brilliant and kind and probably save the world.”

“Or take it over and rule it absolutely,” John said, grabbing the last of Amber’s cookies from the tray before it vanished into Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen. 

“Or that,” Sherlock conceded. He caught Amber’s eye and they both burst out laughing.


End file.
